In His Face A Shining Light
by Carryon14
Summary: On a bright day in spring Queen Lothiriel is abducted and taken to Harad so that she might atone for the crimes of Rohan. Back in Edoras, King Eomer finds to his astonishment that his loveless marriage is not what it seems. *COMPLETE* [Warning: minor character death, angst]
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I own nothing. The cover image is of Rodin's "The Kiss," in which the lovers embrace but their lips never meet.

* * *

**In His Face A Shining Light**

_But wandering in the summer in the woods of Neldoreth __Beren came upon Luthien a__t a time of evening under moonrise...Then all memory of his pain departed from him, and he fell into an enchantment; for Luthien was the most beautiful of all the Children of Iluvatar...As the light upon the leaves of trees, as the voice of clear waters, as the stars above the mists of the world, such was her glory and her loveliness; and in her face was a shining light._

_- The Silmarillion_

_Chapter XIX "Of Beren and Luthien"_

**Chapter I**

They found the queen's horse first. Dawn was a wash of orange overtaking blue across the sky, and the air had the bite of a premature spring, sweet but bitter. All the woods were yet in darkness, peaks of pines like the inky ridge of a porcupine's back running along the horizon. It was a sunrise that, for Eomer, would obliterate the memory of all sunrises before it.

Grimund ahead gave the call, then Eomer saw it too, that blink of white against the darkness, almost a milky blue color in this light like a patch of late-melting snow. Next to him Aldhelm gave a blast on his horn, calling off the other search parties.

"Sir," Grimund slowed until he was alongside.

"No. I will go first." Eomer answered what his old friend did not ask.

Though with all of his being he wished he could look away, he spurred Firefoot ahead, further to the edge of the forest where strands of a once-proud white mane blew in the air.

He had always had a strong stomach. Sights and smells of a battle did not bother him. He had seen too much for it to have any effect on him any more – the blood-glazed spears, the entrails split and steaming against the snow, the warm red spurt pouring over his bare hands like water. Eomer could eat a full meal before a campaign and lose none by day's end.

But this morning there was a buzzing in the back of his skull, and a roil set to in his stomach as he came close to what remained of the mare he had given Lothiriel on the day of their betrothal. A beautiful white mare, a mount fit for a queen.

There should be more flies, the thought came to him as he stepped closer to the carnage. Where were the carrion birds? But all was eerie silent, until Firefoot suddenly reared, sending up a shriek, as if he had scented something in the air. Eomer tried to urge him on, but the stallion was adamant, bucking and tossing, eyes rolling back in his head.

Eomer dismounted finally, left Firefoot to his fit and went on ahead, alone. _As she had been alone, when she came upon this place._

The air was only broken by the soft morning song of thrushes. He walked by the first dead crow, and the next, wings splayed and broken as if they had fallen from a height. Then Eomer broke into a run, the ice tipped grass of early morning turning to cold water as they grazed the top of his boots.

The mare Almaren took so readily to Lothiriel, though it bore no love for him; scenting him, she would toss her tail and peel back those smooth lips to let the strong teeth show. In fact he hated the damn horse, the way she would raise a ruckus every time he came near, as if he were a threat to her dark-haired mistress, as if she had to be warned whenever her lord and husband were to be within a stone's throw. But he had also been a little jealous; for he had a way with horses, and it galled him that the half-Meara had taken it upon herself to dislike him so much, so specifically.

With her back to him, Almaren might have just have lain down to rest. The trampled grass told its own story, of pursuit and capture, of a stand, and then defeat.

The sight brought him up short as he circled the corpse. Three grey wolves, their bodies lean with a winter's hunger and their jaws still red with Almaren's blood, struck dead even as they dug their snout into her lacerated, red belly. They lay there, like pups at their mother's milk, eyes glazed, her red blood drying on their teeth, their legs collapsed and unmoving.

As for that damn horse, her eye was closed, and her coat unmarred but for for the wolves at their feeding, and it looked as if she had been sleeping but for the one red mark on her neck where the poison must have gone in through her largest artery, filling her heart and the rest of her body in seconds. A bloody hand print sealed that death's kiss.

All he felt, then, in that moment, was a need to know if Almaren had bitten the bastard who did this to her. It was only the call of Aldhelm in his ear, bidding him cease, that he came to and found himself trying to pry open the jaws of the white horse, clenched tighter in death than even that one time when she had nipped his shoulder and left a trail of slime over his best ceremonial robes.

How Lothiriel had laughed and laughed. Almaren was the one thing that would really make Lothiriel laugh, he thought, one of the only things that gave her true joy. And she had fought for her mistress, and was dead, and with nothing to show for it.

"Poison," Aldhelm said, "sir, she's been poisoned."

He wasn't stupid, Eomer thought. He knew it was poison. He just had to make sure that she got some bastard good, that she fought back. The Haradrim - and it was the Haradrim, he knew it in his bones - they prized horses of the Rohirrim, and killing Almaren was no casual brutality for them, but a declaration of war.

It was no small thing, to kill a descendant of a Meara, even if the damn horse was half Meara and likely half demon. Eomer just wanted to make sure that she took a part of someone with her, he thought, as Aldhelm dragged him back from the cold mouth of the horse, opened now.

Something dropped from between the rows of white teeth. In the red haze of his mind Eomer thought, hoped it was a attacker's hand, or a bit of cloth to lead them on. But then Aldhelm picked the metal ensign up with a cloth, and he saw it was Lothiriel's seal, the Queen's seal.

Eomer felt lightheaded.

"Why would she leave this, sir?"

Why would she leave this, he wondered wildly. She gave it to her horse, she left it for him to find - the badge of her office, the symbol of her authority that she carried at all times, as he did, worn around the neck and next to her heart. Leaving it was as good as relinquishing her position as queen. She may as well have tossed the damn ring back at his face too, given what she's done, Eomer thought, suddenly in a towering fury as he stared at the loop of well-worn leather and the small medallion on the end of it.

Then a memory came to him, snapped along the darkened paths of his mind like a strike of lightning, left him blind.

_We cannot afford war with the Haradrim, and you know this, sir._

She had never gotten out of the habit of calling him sir.

_What we cannot afford is to leave that threat sitting merrily east of our borders, Lothiriel._

_I know,_ she said, _but now is not the time. You'd beggar the country, and cripple the young who are left. There will be no Rohan left if you and Aragorn were to call the men to your banners again. Both of you know this._

He had looked at her across the fire. She deferred to him in council always and only ever said these things, important things, in their own chambers. She was always so serious, so serious.

_And what if they were to kidnap me, wife? Hie me off to the famed Cages of Harad, never to emerge again? Would you leave me there to rot? Would there be no war waged for Eomer's life?_

She looked at him, that steady, grey-eyed look.

_If they were to take you, Eomer, I'd come after you with both Gondor and Rohan at my side. _

_And why is that, wife?_

_Because you are the heart of this place, sir. _

Even today he remembered how surprised he had been at that, how suddenly touched and yet taken aback, as if he had glimpsed something in her, something that he had not hitherto suspected. Then she blinked, smiled her wry smile, and she was Lothiriel again. Young, but dependable, tough-minded, his ally in the restoration of his country.

_I'd go to war for you. But for no other reason._ She said. _For no one else. Promise me that. For Rohan, for your people._

_Promise me_.

"She's telling us to let her go," said Eomer, staring at her ensign.

"No," said Grimund, who always seemed to understand Lothiriel better than Eomer did, "The queen is _commanding _us."

He was right, Eomer thought. Giving up the ensign was as good as giving her up her queenship. The council would understand this. They would at least understand that no war needed to be waged on behalf of one who was no longer the queen of Rohan.

She had his promise. But in the end she took the choice from him.

That woman, he thought helplessly. That maddening, infuriating woman. He was so angry at her; he had never been so helplessly angry at her, at anyone – except for his sister, except for his sister that time, lying as dead in the Pelennor.

He wanted to curse her. Lothiriel, you are going to die, he wanted to say, in pain, in humiliation, away from all that you know and love. They will have no mercy for you.

And he thought he could see those grey eyes, steady as ever through the red haze at the edges of his mind, and hear her say in that steady, low voice. _For no one else,_ she said, _There will be no Rohan left. Promise me._

They burned Almaren's body. Grimund and Aldhelm exchanged uneasy glances over the mask-like face of their young king, still kneeling in the grass, his eyes dry and not a word on his lips.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Still, own nothing. Tip of my hat for the kind reviewer who caught my apiary/aviary fumble. Much appreciated. I also appreciate reviews ;)

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**Chapter II**

_Western wind, when wilt thou blow,_

_The small rain down can rain._

_Christ, if my love were in my arms,_

_And I in my bed again._

_-Anon, before 1530_

There was only darkness when Lothiriel opened her eyes. Against her fingers were rough wooden slats. The air was stale. For a moment she thought she had been buried alive.

For a moment.

Then the wheels under her caught in a rut on the road and threw her against the side of the cart again. The right side of her skull flared to life with pain. The roaring in her ears that she had taken to be the tide of panic clarified itself into the sound of rain on the wooden boards above her. There was a smell as of old, wet hay.

A voice above her shouted out. A whip cracked and the fear of horses made itself heard, shrill and high, reminding her of another scream.

She remembered cutting one of her abductors with the short sword that Grimund taught her to use. But then someone had cuffed her around the head and punched her, hard, in the belly. She fell off her mount and lay there stunned, her breath gone from her and the world spinning, but conscious.

She was conscious when they went after Almaren.

She cursed her own wakefulness, then. It was so near a human scream, a woman's scream and yet a thousand times worse, more outraged, more frightened. Lothiriel knew that she would never forget the sound.

Her head ached as if she had been dropped upon it from a height. It was bitter cold.

She wanted her own hearth's fire, a cup of warm tea and Eomer sitting beside her with his feet propped too close to the fire as always. Nights when she thought their _partnership, _as he called it, might one day be tolerable for her.

Maybe he was happier now that she was gone, his arranged southern bride with her dark hair and dark thoughts. Maybe he breathed a sigh of relief, after he got over Almaren's loss.

Then the tears started. She tried to stop crying, telling herself that she had drank nothing, that she had precious little water to spare. But more tears came; reinforcements to a sortie, and the sortie turned to a rout. They trampled over her. She choked on them.

Her heart beat too quick, the pulse drumming against her throat. Like the heart of a black bird she had held once – oh, how long ago – in the bright aviaries of Dol Amroth. Lothiriel remembered how the black feathers fluttered and the faint beat raced under her fingers the moment she laid hands on the bird, and how hurriedly she had let it free, fearing that even the brush of her fingers would kill it.

_Isn't it funny,_ said old Anarien, who kept the aviary, _that she could fly from one corner of Middle Earth to the other, through storm and ice, past drought and the hunters from above, and yet nearly expire of fright within your hands?_

* * *

Her eyes were open when the roof lifted above her and the cold rain came pouring down. There were hands on her shoulders, drawing her to a sitting position, unchaining her wrists from the side of the cart. A cloak was tossed over her to shield her from the rain. Her own must have been taken, she thought, a fine raiment of dark green, another gift from Eomer.

Lothiriel came to a stand and nearly collided with the first man. His hood fell back, and it shocked her to see a young face looking back, no older than that of Haleth, who Eomer had taken to be a ward of the house and ran his errands for him now, always smartly turned out, bright-eyed and inquisitive.

But these eyes were dark, old, and watchful. There was a bandage on the boy's left arm. The cloth, muddy brown to begin with, was darkly wet in the rain.

He waited while she regained her feet. Her cell was covered by a false floor in an ox cart, she saw. The slats above had been removed and put to one side. Several bales of hay had been moved aside so that she could climb out.

One of her kidnappers was waiting at the edge of the cart. Lothiriel tried to keep her legs steady. As she walked, the chains around her feet clicking softly against one another. She tried to school her face.

He had long light hair, the proud forehead and beaked nose common to the Rohirrim, and he wore a smile. Years in the sun carved deep lines into his face, and permanently turned his beacon-blue eyes to slits.

He extended a hand as she neared the edge. Lothiriel looked at him, at the little smile on his lips. He might have just have been a steward, handing her down from Almaren after a long journey. But he was not.

And she thought, _I could use this. _The farce of civility between them now was all that was left of civility. The pretense of it was all that stood between her and whatever awaited her.

She brought herself back to the present; to the rain beading in spots against her riding boots, to the singed smell of her cloak, to the cold water on her face, to the man holding his hand to her. Away from her thoughts.

She forced herself to put her hand in his, she let her legs give into their shaking, and held on to the older man's hand as she clambered to the ground.

There was a hand on her elbow. The youth, half a head shorter than she, had come alongside. She couldn't refrain from flinching as his fingers found her arm, but the restraints on her wrists minimized the movement, or he simply took no offense, because he hummed a low tune under his breath and steered her further into the woods. They might have been at a dance, she thought, and he a young nobleman who wanted a turn on the floor with the Princess of Dol Amroth. But they were not.

Three other men went about tethering the horses and covering the wagon. The three other men did not have the coloring of the Rohirrim. They spoke quietly to each other in a tongue she did not understand and seemed to take orders from the man who handed her down from the cart, the man with the light blue eyes. They were tense and watchful, and spoke little. They avoided her eyes.

They were in the middle of deep woods. Tall pines and old gnarled trees obscured the stars. The cloak kept most of the weather out, but fingers of icy rain crawled down her neck and into her bodice. The cart had come off he main road to the edges of the woods, she thought. She did not know the woods here, but she thought they headed Eastward, away from Edoras, away from home.

After the youth took out a longer, finer chain and ran it through the metal circle around her ankle, she was allowed to go as far as the chain gave and to relieve herself. It was not very far, only as far as the next tree, and Lothiriel hid behind it, trembling with humiliation and anger.

She was then secured with a shorter tether around a great tree trunk while the tent was built around her, with the opening farthest away.

The tent flap opened.

"_We_ are not going to hurt you, you know," the youth said, "you're far too valuable for that sort of thing."

His Westron was faintly accented but she could understand him. And then she listened to his words. _That sort of thing,_ she thought with disbelief. Rape, beating, death; horrors she could not even contemplate, but had been contemplating, all day. And he had said, _that sort of thing._

He had a water skin, a crust of bread and a bowl in his hand. He was maybe sixteen, she thought, certainly not over twenty. The recalcitrant spots of youth were with him still, giving his forehead and cheeks a speckled appearance.

He cocked his head and regarded her.

"You know, I've never seen a queen up close before."

He looked at her, expectant. And she realized he was waiting for her to respond before giving her water. It made her afraid all over again. There was a dry stickiness along her face, a copper taste on her tongue and a gnawing hunger in her belly. She knew she had to respond, that is, she had to respond if she wanted to eat.

"I hope that I do not disappoint," Lothiriel said.

"You're very tall for a woman." He sat down opposite her, the water skin dangling from in one hand, "Is it true that the Princes of Dol Amroth are descended from the elves?"

Lothiriel opened her mouth, and closed it again. She tried to breathe normally and not stare at the water.

"There are those who say that long ago, Imrazor the Numenorean married a beautiful elven maiden, that their heirs lived on in Dol Amroth, but my father and his fathers before him are Men. They will all age and die," she paused, "as will I."

He handed the skin to her, and she realized on her first sip that it was wine, not water. The liquid was sour against her tongue, and had a bite to it, but the coolness was blissful beyond telling.

She drank slowly, small sips, while he said, "My father says that Dol Amroth sits by the sea, where the blue water goes on forever, all the way to the edge of the world."

Whatever conversation she had been expecting with her captors, it wasn't this.

"It is beautiful there," she said, "Come the spring the harbor is full of ships like white swans, and the sunlight turns the waters to azure."

"What made you leave that place for _here_?" He threw a hand up, gesturing to all around them, and she guessed that he meant _Rohan_.

"Does it matter? I'm here now."

He looked at her, holding onto the heel of bread and the bowl of soup. Patient; waiting.

Her stomach growled again.

"You know who I am," Lothiriel said, "I came here when I married the King of the Mark."

"And King Eomer," the youth said, "What is he like?"

She paused. What was she supposed to say?

"He is a good man, and a kind one."

The youth rolled his eyes, "Is it true what they say about him?"

"What do they say?"

"They said he is a great warrior, that he single-handedly brought down an oliphaunt with one spear, that he rode in the lead when the Rohirrim stormed across the Pelennor against the armies of Mordor."

"Yes," she said, "It is true. He did all of that and more."

"He must be a giant," the young man said.

"Yes," she thought it best to agree, "he is that."

Though it was one of the things that had confounded the court when she first arrived and stood toe to toe with their king to find that he was not one hair taller than she. The heels of all her court shoes were trimmed to nearly nothing, after that.

The young man was right, Lothiriel was a very tall woman.

"But he couldn't exactly keep track of his wife, could he now? Here, eat," he said, finally passing the bread and the bowl to her. She looked at it carefully. There was a dark corner where his finger was, but otherwise it looked to be safe.

"We are not going to hurt you," he repeated, "unless you try to fight, of course. Then there's no telling what manners of things might happen. So take it easy, alright?"

She took a chance.

"What's your name?"

He considered it, and then he said, "Cale."

"Cale, why was I taken?"

He thought about it for a moment, and then seemed to make up his mind.

"For the bounty, of course."

She took a breath, gathered her courage.

"My husband, King Eomer would give you just as great a reward, maybe greater, if you were to return me to Edoras," she said, and then softened her voice, lowered it between them. It was something that worked with her patients who were agitated, in pain and doubt.

She reached across to put a hand on his.

"You don't have to do this," she said, looking at those eyes, so dark despite the brightness of his hair, "You are young. Your whole life awaits you; but do this and you will live hunted for the rest of your life. You can help me get home. Please."

The sharp crack of his hand against her face stunned her. He hit her hard enough to snap her head to the side. The sting of it came, burning into her face. She had never been hit like this before, never in all her days.

Strong hands fitted themselves expertly around her windpipe, with enough pressure to make her lightheaded. Lothiriel looked up to see those eyes, almost black in the night, and a smile on the side of his mouth.

"I told you, sweetheart, no fighting," he said, "now my father would have given you that and worse. Do you understand? Or do you need me to teach it to you again, and better?"

And she knew, no matter how young he looked, no matter how much of Haleth's young spark she saw in his face, he was far better at this game than she. The other men had been tense and brittle, but Cale was not. Even now his words were soft and genial, as if they were speaking of some small matter over tea.

"I thought so," he said, letting her go and coming to a stand.

He tossed a piece of rain-wet cloth at her.

"And wipe your face, sweetheart," he said. "there's blood all over and you look a fright. We would wish to represent our country well. Wouldn't we?"

* * *

Some time in the night Lothiriel was startled awake in a tent of snoring men. there was a thought on the edge of her mind, some nagging idea that finally worked itself through to the end of its logic, and woke her.

From the other men there was no courtesy or lack thereof. Apart from Cale, no one spoke to her. They only slept on, barring her way to the door. She looked up across the tent to see the older blond man, who she thought must have been Cale's father, keeping a careful eye turned outward. His bare face shone in a spray of reflected moonlight.

Then she had it, somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered – she must have read it, somewhere, in some sensational novel, long ago.

It was a good sign if your captors hid their face from you.

For if they did not, it was because you will not live long enough to bring your retribution down upon them.

They might have no plans of hurting her. Maybe Cale, whatever else he was, was not a liar.

But the one who had put a bounty on her, Lothiriel thought, had no intention of letting her go.

* * *

They woke her before the dawn, told her to relieve herself. They they put a bag over her head. She was hauled with no great gentleness into her compartment, secured, and the doors closed over her.

Lothiriel prided herself on her intelligence, not only the logical turnings of her mind but her intuitive grasp of things. She tried to think, now, lying curled on her side in a cold cart, clattering at even greater speed toward some unknown end, and found that the logic was more difficult to grasp, that the clues eluded her, that the usual finesse of her intelligence, the wide band that gathered the ideas from all the corners of her mind had been replaced by something else, some creature, frightened and on edge, whose anger blotted out all rational thought.

There was simply no room for anything but fear. When the pain had burst on the side of her head, when the strong hands went about her neck, there was no room for intelligence. The experience of violence, the new raw thing in her life, was too close for analysis, for anything but reaction.

The animal in her wanted to flee, to bolt, to close its eyes and pretend that nothing was happening.

There was a time when she used to debate with herself the precise reason why Eomer could not love her.

Maybe it was because they didn't have to fight for it, she used to think. Because Faramir and Eowyn had fought so hard for theirs, as had Aragorn and his Arwen. Because Luthien had dragged Beren from the clutches of Morgoth to be with him. And the bitterness of that thought scoured at her heart, the thought that hers was an easy love – at least it was, for her. That in its ease was its downfall, like a thatched house without foundation swept away by the flood.

She had first seen Eomer on the day of Faramir's wedding, gold and tawny and full of light. And by the end of the night she knew, with a certain sinking feeling, with a knowledge that was irremediable, with a sense of doom, that there would be no looking back for her. It was obvious to someone like her who was rarely overtaken by emotion, that this was unlike anything else; that he was unlike anyone else.

But when she became his wife, it was no longer so easy. He was courteous, but cool. He was watchful since the very beginning, as if waiting for her to show her true self.

Lately another conviction had been growing in her, that maybe he could not love her because he knew her to be a coward.

She thought that Eomer would be ashamed of her, to see her as she was now, cowering beneath in a pit while her captors sat above and joked with each other. The blissful queen of the Riddermark, hiding and in tears, with no courage in her. He would have pitied her, but she could see that faint contempt rising in him too, that contempt of weakness, of fear.

_Are you afraid?_ He used ask her, the incredulity clear in his voice, _why are you afraid?_

_You are the queen of the Mark,_ he used to say,_ it means all your fear is behind you. It means you have nothing to fear._

But she had barely grazed her attackers, trying to fend them off. And the only real bargaining she did was with his title, and she had been roundly beaten down for it.

And that was almost worst than anything, that thought, that he might one day find out what had happened and realize what she was.

Because Eomer would have known, she thought, he would have known how to make his escape, he would have known to better read his captors, he would have been half way home by now. Eowyn too, the White Lady of Rohan, she would have done it too, and would have slain them all before they even took her.

They would have been strong, they would have had the courage of lions.

She did not have strength at her side, Lothiriel thought. She only had her intelligence, and her intelligence was drowning beneath the waves of her fear and anger and the old pain and despair that always swam along with the thoughts of Eomer.

For a long time all thoughts were dark inside her head. U_nhappy thoughts of an unhappy woman._ She drifted, but there was no island of ease inside her mind, all was clenched as tight as a trap, and there was no escape.

She went elsewhere for a time.

The rain had stopped.

And there was old Anarien's face again, and the shock of white hair that was so thick despite his old age, his stooped back, and the absolute gentleness of his hands as he took the dark bird from her fingers.

They had found him, when news of the siege of Gondor had reached Dol Amroth, when the news of the black tide came, they had found him sitting as he always did beneath the broadleaved trees of his aviary. All the birds had been let free, save the one goldfinch chirping by him where he sat, his jaw slack with death, his right forearm in tatters and the blood dripping off the edges of his chair.

He knew his birds, they had said, but he never did know a human artery from a vein.

But that bright airy morning he was still stooped, still smiling, and he had ushered the black bird into her cage, where she skipped to the very farthest edges, still twitching from fear, away from Lothiriel and Anarien.

_She is not a bird of prey, that much is true. _He said, whistling a little tune to the other birds of the cage._ She will lose against the sparrow-hawk that seeks to make her his meal. Yet she flies farther and truer than the peregrine, she can live in climes cold enough to kill the eagle. Strength comes in all different forms. She was built not to conquer, but to endure._

* * *

Her captors made sure that she remained disoriented. It was far past sunset when they stopped to again. There was Cale , opening the doors to her cell. She did not look at him but went to the edge of the cart where the blue-eyed man waited, his hand outstretched as before.

She took the ring off her thumb, the one her father had given her at her coming-of-age, a sapphire set in white gold fashioned in the shape of swan's wing. She held it in her fist, and hovered above his.

"For the courtesy of knowing where you are taking me," she said, and let heavy ring fall into his hand. She couldn't help but feel that she was beginning to negotiate with parts of herself, with portions of her identity.

He twisted it between nimble fingers– _daughter, sister_, in that ring – and tucked it into a breast pocket.

Then, wordless, he took her hand and tugged her, half-falling, half-stumbling off the cart. Her feet caught one against another and she barely had enough time to put her hands out to break her fall.

The ground had frozen over, and ice burned like a fire against her palms. He kicked her legs out from under her as she tried to get up.

Lothiriel heard him spit in to the ground next to her.

"And that's for the _courtesy_," he said, "of giving me what's mine in the first place. Do you honestly think that you can take back what was done to me and mine by giving me this?"

Then a kick landed. Lothiriel covered her face with her arms.

* * *

It was cold out in the wood where they struck camp. The trees were thinning out and they did not pitch a tent, perhaps for fear of discovery, perhaps because the morning would come too soon.

"No bread for you tonight," Cale said, "I told you what happens when you make him mad, didn't I?"

Her hair had come loose. Lothiriel tried to lift it out of her face, but to no avail. She was angry and humiliated. Her ribs ached. She was thirsty.

But to her surprise he tossed the wine-skin into her lap and sat down across from her.

"Why do you want to know where you are going, anyway? You know by now it's nothing good."

"I prefer to know than to wonder. Wouldn't you?"

He shrugged, "I doubt anyone would go to so much trouble, for me."

The dark eyes were considering while she drank the soured wine. Lothiriel waited.

"And if I were to tell you where we are headed," Cale said, "what would you give me? I don't think that you have another pretty sapphire hidden in those fingers."

"You would tell me?" She felt like a cornered bird negotiating with the cat.

"Of course," he smiled lazily. It only chilled her further, that he was so young to smile like that. "And if you don't have any ideas, I _have_ been thinking about a kiss all day. You know, I'd probably never have another chance to kiss a queen."

She wiped the wine from her mouth. She wanted to spit in his face, to say all the words that came into her mind.

_Think._

Lothiriel glanced at the dark sodden bandage on his arm.

"I can sew that up for you," she said, "I was trained by the healers of Lossarnach and Minas Tirith."

"It's a scratch," he said, and there was a strange hardness in those eyes, "father says men do not cry over a scratch. Besides, why would you do that for me?"

"Because we treat everyone who came through our doors, even the enemy," she said, "Do you think it was only the men of Rohan and Gondor who fell on Pelennor? We treated our soldiers who were brought through our doors. And when we had seen to them, we went into the fields and treated their enemies who were left to die."

"Then you are weak," he said, "and you deserve what's coming to you."

"I am willing to help you," she said, "I would have said something yesterday, but I was afraid of you, and I hated you when you struck me."

He said nothing, only took the wine skin from her and stalked out the tent.

Sometimes later in the night she was shaken awake. Hunger was now a companion on every waking. And along with hunger Cale stood there, the last of the fire dying behind him, with needle and thread and a bottle of spirits. He worked the knot free on her hands, but left the chains on her feet.

He took a long drink from the bottle, and handed it to her.

She opened the cloth bandage on his arm and found the wound surprisingly clean, but deep. He must have tried to take care of it, despite his bravado. She poured the liquor into his arm and was a little disturbed at how satisfied she felt, as he hissed and bit his lip in pain.

Lothiriel took the silver needle from him, and bent it between her fingers until it was curved like a fishing hook at the end. She dipped it in the wine and he ran it through the flame. Then she rubbed the strong spirits over her fingers, and set to with the needle.

Healer Lewell had always complimented her stitches. It was gratifying to see what her fingers remembered, to see that the track of silk thread through Cale's skin was even and neat.

She hooked the needle through his skin again and again. The ritual of suturing calmed her. It took her back to when it was her studies, and only her studies, that occupied both her waking and dreaming mind.

"We are going to the harbor, first," he said.

She nodded. She was coming to the last stitch. She bit the thread from the needle, and began to throw knots.

Cale watched by the dying flames as the loop went over her thumb, and then her forefinger, and the strings were pulled through, quick and efficient, with no movement wasted.

"Then Harad," he said, "The Cages. You've heard about them, surely?"

Lothiriel had heard of the Cages of Harad. Ever since she was a child Amrothos had exploited her fear of small spaces by telling her about the Cages, where princesses and queens (it was always princesses and queens when they were telling the story to Lothiriel) who had been caught lost in the ocean or in the woods, were taken to be sacrificed to the old bloody gods of the Haradrim.

_Aye, they would shave off all her hair and make her sleep on a bed of fire ants until she scratched herself to madness or to death,_ Amrothos said with glee.

_It would take more than fire ants to break me,_ was her scornful reply, _whereas they'd just have to take away your sweets and books and you'd raving mad within a week._

As they grew older, the methods of torture they devised for each other had become more elaborate and specific. But when Lothiriel told Eomer about the Cages of Harad he only laughed.

They had never heard of such a thing in Rohan, he told her. It upset her, thinking that so much of her childhood terrors were to be dismissed by a momentary laugh for him. It galled her, because he always thought her far too gullible, too alarmist, too frightened by everything to be a proper Queen of the Riddermark.

She still remembered how he teased her that night, _And what if they were to hie me off to those famed Cages of Harad, never to emerge again? Would you leave me there to rot?_

"Stories to frighten children with," she said to Cale, still looking at the neat row of silk thread in his skin. She had probably never done so fine a row of stitches.

"Oh, they're not stories, sweetheart," he said, "not stories at all."

Lothiriel looked over at the remaining ring on her finger, a simple gold band cut with scrollwork like the sort on Eomer's sword. Her wedding band, _wife,_ it said, sitting firmly on her left hand. She remembered how he had scoffed, when she told him about the Cages. It did not feel like much of a victory, to be right in this matter.

Lothiriel couldn't think of any words to say when Cale retied the bonds on her hands.

"Better get your rest," he said. And it was either because of the spirits he had imbibed or the relief of having his cut cared for, because then he said, "I wish it was better news. I suppose you have some time, now, to make peace with your gods."

It wasn't until two days later, when Lothirel stepped into the windy night to see black Corsair sails against the clouds, and a tall dark figure of a man upon the prow, that she truly realized how badly she had wanted Eomer to be right.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Quotes later taken from _The Silmarillion_.

* * *

**Chapter III**

_In that book which is _

_My memory,_

_On the first page_

_That is the chapter when_

_I first met you_

_Appear the words..._

**_Here begins a new life._**

_- Dante Alighieri, La Vita Nuova_

"They're bringing him now, sire," Aldhelm said.

The man, a self-dubbed healer, looked like he hadn't had a good bath in months. His hair hung in clusters and clumps, and a whiff of herbs covering over decay permeated the room. The two who brought him in were seasoned soldiers from Aldburg, and even they looked put-off by the stench. He had started groveling even before he came in.

There was such fear in the man's eyes, Eomer thought. Fear of him.

"Your name," Eomer said.

The guards released his arms and the man fell to his knees, as if rendered boneless by the sight of Eomer.

"You need not kneel before me," Eomer said, "Tell me your name."

"I swear it, sire, I did not know who she was!"

"You are a man of the Riddermark," Eomer's temper was shredded to a fine strand, "look at me!"

The other man finally lifted his head, though he remained kneeling. Green eyes fixed themselves on Eomer, blinking, blinking.

"S-S-Swefred, milord. Son of Swidhelm."

"Swefred," Eomer grasped at the fraying edges of his patience, "Tell me what happened two days before, when Queen Lothiriel came to Immin's Hill."

While Swefred began his halting tale, Eomer sat back in his chair and tried not to think of violence. He had heard most of the story already.

For at least the last six months, Lothiriel had been coordinating an exchange of medical knowledge between the Healers of Minas Tirith and the midwives and healers of Rohan.

It had been no easy task. First she had to find those in the Houses of Healing who had inclination to leave their city for what most of them considered the backwater villages of Rohan. There were only two who would agree to come for the winter. First the hook-nosed Healer Lewell, who constantly smelled a little of garlic. There was also Healer Merwen, who sat beside Eomer now at this interrogation, still shaken from her ordeal.

The three of them began their diplomatic exchange of knowledge at Edoras; the wise-women and midwives there were interested and willing, though a little perplexed that Lothiriel found the need to undertake something so extensive, when their leech-craft had worked just fine for the last few hundred years. And it was tedious, sorting through the disparate schools of herbal and medicinal lore. Gondor had codified most of its knowledge into great tomes, while the knowledge of Rohan was passed down from mother to daughter, one generation after another.

She was not trying to force the Gondorian ways onto the Rohirrim, Lothiriel told him. She was first trying to understand how they practiced their craft in Rohan, and maybe then, maybe after that, the two ways may come to some understanding.

He told her that if they did something better in Gondor, she had his full support to drag the apothecaries of Rohan – kicking and screaming if need be – into the new age.

_By the Mark, you don't need anyone else's authority but your own,_ he told her. And she had given him that look, that inscrutable look of hers that said she disagreed with him on some fundamental point, but thought it too much to try and fight him.

Lothiriel had set her heart on the project; she had even started a herbal garden behind the Meduseld where the herbs and medicinal plants of Rohan could grow alongside those of Gondor.

Eomer had teased her, saying that she cared more for this task than she did for him. For she would return home exhausted night after night, long after he was done with council meetings, and give him that little, bitten-off, rueful smile. It made him think that he wasn't too far off the mark.

_Be reasonable, Eomer, _she would say, _I know this is far too big a job for three people. But someone has to make a start of it._

Then she would fall into bed and sleep like one who was dead until the morning, when she would leave before he could rub the sleep from his eyes, and begin the whole day again.

After Edoras, Merwen and Lothiriel wanted to go further, to Aldburg. They spent a week there. The night they readied themselves to return to the Meduseld, word came of an emergency at Immin's Hill, a small settlement on the outskirts of Aldburg, about a day's ride from Edoras. A woman came saying that her sister was dying in childbed, and that the babe would not emerge.

Towards evening, Lothiriel and Merwen had rushed to Immin's Hill to find Swefred, the local apothecary, attending to a birthing in its third day. The child's head was disproportionate with the mother's pelvis, and it had gone far, far too long. Screams had faded to an eerie silence, save for Swefred's dwindling reassurances the father's tears, and the mother of she who was abed, wailing.

There were no wisewomen in the small town, they informed Eomer. Swefred had driven them out of business, refusing to sell herbs to them, spreading rumors of witchcraft, and none dared reside there.

Eomer could barely imagine the scene; he had never attended the birth of a human child. But he remembered the first time he had seen a mare at her foaling; the hot, raw smell of blood, the warm afterbirth that came when the foal was out, that sense of some great danger passing.

He was told: the moment Lothiriel and Merwen entered the room, they knew the woman was beyond help. They did not delay. Swefred was ordered to move aside, and when he would not, when he began to shout abuse at the two blue-clad women without knowing who they were, he was restrained bodily by Osric and the men who accompanied Lothiriel and Merwen, and thrown from the house.

Lothiriel always traveled in her healer's robes, not those of the queen, rightly thinking that most in Rohan might know her name but did not know her face, and that they would speak more easily with her thinking she was a messenger of the queen, not the queen herself.

And while Lothiriel spoke quietly to the weeping husband, Merwen put a dropper of the tincture of poppy inside the woman's blue lips. The husband and others were escorted out of the room, and the women called for a blade.

"I've never seen anything like it," Osric had told Eomer, blue eyes widening at the memory. "The woman was near death. And the two of them, with nary a hesitation or a word between them, took my dirk and opened her belly, went through skin and fat and muscle, and the blood – dark, oozing blood – and other things came down both sides of the bed. Then suddenly there was the child, cut from his mother's gaping womb, and he was blue and unmoving. He was not moving even while they cut the cord and sucked out what choked him from his nose and mouth, and they dried him and held him close to the fire, and slapped his feet. "

He looked over at Eomer, and there was the memory of it written in his face.

"Then he cried. It was the damnest thing, hearing that babe cry. They had me in the room because they knew I was strong and could hold the lady down if need be, but she moved not at all. She was dead by then, but the babe was alive."

Healer Merwen delivered the wailing child to his father, outside, while inside the room, Lothiriel was sewing up the woman's belly.

"She went layer by layer, inside to out," Osric said, "it was quiet then, there was no more screaming or crying, and it was just the queen putting the dead woman back together, never mind what had gotten all over her Healer's robes, never mind the blood on her shoes."

He paused, frowning, "She was talking to her, too, telling her how well she did, how brave she had been to hold out for so long, how strong she must have been to keep her son alive inside her after all this time. She said, I will make certain he grows up to be a fine man. Her eyes were dry, and it was so peaceful after the scene we walked in on, as if the Queen could really talk to the dead woman. As if the other woman really heard her."

By the time Lothiriel had cleaned the woman's body, a mob had come to the door. Swefred, incensed by the way he had been thrown from the scene, had roused villagers eager for a show.

"And what was it that you said to my wife,_your queen_," Eomer said to Sweford, slowly, so that the red rage at the edges of his sight did not overcome him, "when she came alone to the door of the house?"

"Please milord," Swefred moaned, "please, I did not know who she was, then. I truly did not. Please have mercy, please, don't kill me."

"Man of the Mark," Eomer said, "I command you as your king to tell me truthfully what you said."

"I called her a witch," Swefred said, hanging his head. Tears came out of his eyes, his nose ran into his beard, "I said, take your murdering leech-craft back to Gondor."

"You said, 'go sell yourself to the enemies of the Mark, as your healers did after our king defeated the Haradrim at the Pelennor, and you went to heal our enemy's wounds and whore yourselves to them.'" Merwen said from beside him.

"What else?" Eomer was relentless.

"I said…" the man swallowed, "I said, and take your barren southerner of a queen with you, for her womb is dry and her year is up, and she need plague this land no longer."

Eomer found himself on his feet. There was a dull pounding at his temples and the rage of battle was upon him. His hand itched for a sword.

"Get him out of my sight," he said.

* * *

Lothiriel always sent word if she was to be late. She had always been dependable for that. So when nary a cloud crossed the sky and a full day had passed beyond the date she was to return, Eomer called up his men and rode for Aldburg, hoping that it was nothing more than a misstep for her, a forgetting, an annoyance to be forgiven once they returned home. But it was not to be.

The first thing he had done after finding Almaren was to regroup the search party. Aldhelm blew the horn and the other had come galloping even as the horse's body burned and tracked black smoke into the rising sun.

By then the first shock had passed, and Eomer found himself angry beyond reason, with no small amount of that anger aimed directly at she who was taken. He was profane and short but not irrational. The side of him that could bark out orders when the Mumakil raged about the Pelennor came back to him now at his time of need.

"I don't care what medallion she left behind, Grimund," he had spat, "she is still damn well my wife and she is still the damn Queen of the Mark, _your Queen._ Do I make myself understood? By Erol's name I will not let her die at the hand of our enemies while I stand by and do nothing."

_Even if that was what she wanted_.

And that enraged him, too. What did she mean by leaving the medallion behind? Never mind the council; never mind preventing war - did she actually think that with one gesture, she could throw away what obligation _he_ had to her, as her husband? Did she expect him to give up, before he even began? What kind of a man did she take him to be?

Besides, the council can't intervene with what it doesn't know, Eomer decided.

"Let me take the best of these men, sire," said Grimund, "let me track her and bring her back. The Haradrim might want to start a war, but we will snatch it from their hands."

Eomer said, "I am coming with you."

"No, sire," said his best ranger, "You know that cannot be."

_You know that cannot be. _

Grimund put a hand on his shoulder, hazel eyes held his. "You are our king, sire. The country cannot be leaderless. Have I yet failed thee? Have some faith in an old man who has seen much of the waters and the southern lands. They will have taken her first to port and then down the Anduin, I can feel it. Let me find her and bring her back."

Eomer reflected bitterly that he had even less freedom as King of the Riddermark than as Third Marshall, that now he must delegate the task of finding his wife to another.

"And as for the queen," Grimund continued, "what she did here, she did out of love for you, sire, and for the Mark. Do not rage too long at her."

Eomer shook his head, ground his teeth against each other until they clicked. But he clasped Grimund's arm in acquiescence.

"When she comes back, Grimund, she will know my feelings on this matter."

_I will never forgive her for this._

Grimund had already climbed back on his grey gelding, "She is the only one with enough patience to endure your moods; she loves you rotten."

_She loves you rotten_.

Eomer did not know what to say to that.

Grimund had ever been the most sober and cynical - as well as the most capable - among all of Eomer's men. Grimund had lost much of his family when the Westfold fell, and his moods, already somber and hard-edged, had become only blacker and less compromising. Yet he and Lothiriel had become fast friends for no reason that Eomer could understand, for Grimund was also reserved and unapproachable onto death.

_She loves you rotten._

From a man who had rarely a kind word in his vocabulary. What could he mean? Eomer shook his head. It was too much to try and figure out.

His best rangers and scouts, with Grimund in their lead, were dispatched to track down Lothiriel, though there was at least a day's ride between them and those they pursued. Eomer left with Aldhelm to find survivors of the party that had departed with Lothiriel.

They located them in Aldburg. Three men had died; Osric had taken two arrows to the flesh of his back, one of which punctured a lung. Only the healer Merwen had escaped unscathed.

"King Eomer."

After the morning interview with Swefred, Eomer found himself unable to remain inside the dark rooms and took his horse for more than a few miles around the city. Osric was waiting for him as he dismounted.

"Osric," he said.

"Sire," Osric said, "I have been thinking."

"Yes?"

"I think I may have played a part, unwitting, maybe, but a part. That is to say, I made a mistake, and it might have figured into the queen's abduction."

After two days of downpour the sun was out. The countryside around Immin's Hill was showing its first sprigs of green, and the bright light poured down on every single thing, illuminating the low houses lying near them, the soft turned fields. The smell of the outside air always seemed to calm Eomer, as if to remind him of the reality of this moment, the reality of himself, and what was happening.

"Tell me why you believe this to be true," he said.

Even though Lothiriel had bade him stand back when she opened the door to Swefred and those who followed him that night, Osric had heard every thing the man said.

"You just wouldn't believe the amount of venom that little man could spew," he said, "it's bad to hear it today, by the light of the sun, but it was ten times worse that night. Everyone was feeling on edge; I was feeling it too, after what had just happened, and I knew what tragedy the queen had averted by what she had done. But he slandered her and accused her of all manner of things, and she just stood there alone at the door and took it."

Took it, that is, until Osric decided that he could stand it no longer. He stepped out beside Lothiriel and slugged Swefred full in the face.

"Cur," he spat at the man and the shocked villagers around him, "do you not know the Queen of the Riddermark when you see her?"

And the news was out.

"Could have heard a fly buzz, they were so quiet," Osric said, "And the queen, she just tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and inclined her head to them as if she were dressed in all her finery atop her white horse, and not stained with another woman's blood and gore. Then she stepped back and closed the door."

But it must have taken all of ten minutes for the countryside to know that Queen Lothiriel had come, and the circumstances surrounding her arrival.

"So you think you were responsible for the kidnappers finding out where she was?" Eomer asked.

"Yea, sir. I should have shut my trap, and let her handle it." the grizzled soldier shook his head, "Maybe then the world would not have known about her presence at Immin's Hill. I'm sorry, sire. But I've a daughter her age, and begging milord's pardon but she stood there hearing those words that no father would wish his daughter to hear, and with this look on her face as if she had taken a mortal wound.

"Raegenhere, father of the babe, was grateful and would have offered us shelter, but the queen said no, she would stir up no more enmity in this place. It was near midnight, but she had us gather up our things and make camp instead at the edge of the woods. Which only might have made matters worse, if they already had our track."

Lothiriel often lost sleep, a thing Eomer knew only too well. She slept not at all that night. She had cleaned herself and gotten into another gown and then sat looking into the fire.

"She told me she would sit my watch for me, but I said no. She looked tired, she said that she wanted to go home, and for a second I couldn't be sure if she meant to Edoras or Dol Amroth, she looked so despondent, milord, beggin' your pardon.

"I asked her then if she had taken that vile little man's words to heart, and you know what she said? She said that in her chambers at the Meduseld she has a drawer full of notes that people have left her, calling her worse names than that. Does milord the king know, I asked.

"And she said that she couldn't run scared to you every time a man decides to slander her name. _'I doubt that running scared to him would endear me more._' she said._ 'As long as the people love Eomer, that is what matters. I thought that they might love me; I had hoped that they might_.'

"I told her that it was no matter, that you can't charm your way out of bigotry. But then she smiled a little bitter smile and said,_ 'It's alright. I understand. Their king married a foreigner when he could have elevated one of the greater houses of Rohan. Worse, a foreigner with rumored elven blood; that tends to be a sore point for most. That man was vile and petty tonight, but he is right in one respect, Osric. It's been a year and I have borne Eomer no child._'

"Then she would say no more. I had never heard her speak so much. And I did not know what to tell her, sire. At first light, she shook us awake and asked if we'd ride with her posthaste for Edoras. She had her Queen's cloak on. She'd had enough of this place, she said."

The whole party set out along the main road. By the speed that Lothiriel had set Osric thought they would be in long before the sunset.

It was Almaren who first scented their hunters, around midday.

"They numbered about twenty; the kidnapper's team was maybe six or eight, but they had hired sell-swords, and many of them. Three of our men turned to give them their fight and their lives, while the healer drove her horse into the woods and lost them. But the professionals split off from the band and came after the queen and me."

The pursuit took maybe only ten minutes.

"My horse was slower, and they had archers. I took one arrow, and then two through the armor. They were too many, and their mounts fresh, unlike ours. I think she knew that they were coming after her and there was no escaping for either of us. My horse was starting to stumble, for we were in the woods. But I knew Almaren could run, at least for a while yet. So I made ready to face them."

Then a strange thing happened.

"The queen, she always had a way with that horse of hers. She bade that mare come alongside me, easy like, as if we weren't crashing through the underbrush, fleeing for our lives. She leaned over to my mare Cynwise's ear and said something. Then she reached over, I thought to take hold of my hand, but instead she grabbed me hard, here, at this spot in my neck" – he pointed to a place behind his hear – "and pinched. Those hands of hers are surpassing strong, and I knew not a single thing more until I woke up hours later, by the river where my horse idled and drank. By then she was gone.

"We were already in the woods when she did this," he said, pointing to the spot in his neck, "and you said they found her horse at the edge of the clearing. I expect that she must have turned her mare around and rode directly at them, to pull them away from me. I expect that's one of the bravest things that I would have ever seen."

Osric suffered a punctured lung, and even this day he wouldn't take in a deep breath. Only his natural loquacity spurred him on.

"I would have gone after her, sire. I should have. But I was - I hate to admit this, I was barely fit to return to Aldburg. So I have failed thee. And her, too, to whom I owe my life."

"Not just you, Osric. I have failed her too," Eomer said.

_For she never came to me with her worries. _

_For if it were I who was taken, she would have come after me with Gondor and Rohan at her side._

Before Eomer left Immin's Hill, Raegenhere came with his son to bid the King farewell.

"I called him Aedilhum, for his mother was Aedilhild," the man said, "but had it been a lass, I would have named her after the queen, sire."

Eomer held the infant awkwardly. He did not have much experience with such things.

But he looked into the drowsy face of the babe, and saw a flash of blue eye and a soft, reaching arm. He touched that tiny palm and watched the five minuscule fingers close over his large one. He breathed in that warm and sweet smell of a newborn human being, and there was a tightness in his chest.

"It will be as Queen Lothiriel had said," Eomer told the man with his tired eyes where pain warred with joy, "If you or your son should need for anything, ride for Edoras and there will be a place for you."

The man stuttered his thanks, and took his infant away, leaving Eomer standing there feeling a strange ache in his arms that seemed to come not from the weight of the tiny babe, but from his absence.

* * *

When Eomer burst into Lothiriel's chambers, he looking for those damned notes in the drawer she told Osric about, but not he. He had decided that when he found them he would burn every single one, but only after he figured out which coward had written such things to his wife, and gave them all a piece of his mind.

But when he came through the doors, he instead found Hilda on the floor with papers scattered all around her, failing miserably to suppress her tears.

"Sire!"

She jumped to her feet, which upset another stack precariously perched on the arm of a mahogany chair. Hilda shrieked as more paper cascaded all over the floor.

"Hilda, please calm your self and tell me what's wrong."

He waved aside her frantic apologies. She was Aldhelm's cousin, a sensible widow, and a more-than-competent house-keep.

Her eyes were red and her nose was dripping and she was trying to explain something to him, something involving cleaning up Lothiriel's belongings to send to her father and brothers, how the Handfasting was soon to end and there would be no Bonding to follow.

Eomer took her hands. He ran a calming palm down her back. He said not a thing, only waited until she slowed her run of words.

She shoved a piece of paper into his hands.

"Here," she said.

He looked at it, and there was Hilda's likeness reproduced with astonishing ability. Only a few lines were drawn to indicate the brow, and the hair was filled in with rough sweeps to suggest the grand curls. But it was the mouth, the face, no – the expression. There it was, a few lines and there was Hilda, cresting on a laugh.

He had seen her laugh like that. She laughed exactly like that, looking at you straight in the eye and bubbling over.

"Did Lothiriel do this?"

He knew that she did. She had shown him some sketches when they sat before the fire. The Meduseld, with startling accuracy, but more often small thatched huts of the villagers, with their children playing outside in the chicken coop. There was one youngster, apple cheeked and tousle-haired that she especially liked to draw.

He had grown used to the faint scratch of her pen whenever she was with him. One evening he had asked if she kept a journal, too.

_No,_ the corners of that mouth twitched, _I have three brothers. Three very inquisitive brothers, and Amrothos happens to be extremely adept at picking locks. I learned that lesson long ago. It's harder for them to throw pictures back in my face than my own words._

"Aye, it is in milady's hand," Hilda said.

"It's a good rendering," he said.

He realized that she was staring at the paper.

"Do you want to keep it, Hilda?"

"Oh I couldn't do that, sir, could I?"

"Of course you can. It's yours," Eomer passed the thin parchment to her trembling fingers, "now tell me who was it that sent you in here to clean everything out."

She looked at him, the slight flare of his nostrils, the stillness of his arms and the way he held himself and blanched.

"Oh sire, I had my orders from up high, I didn't mean to overstep – "

"From now on, Hilda, no more cleaning. These are my orders."

"Yes sire," she said, "but sire, the handfasting, it is to end soon, is it not? Is milady no longer to be your wife then, if she cannot be here for a bonding?"

"She is still my wife, Hilda," Eomer said, "and she will remain so until we find her and have ourselves a Bonding. "

But he realized that the Council might not see it his way. Traditionally couples in Edoras handfasted for a year and a day, during which a woman's fertility might reckoned. If the husband found himself displeased by her at the end of the year, he may return her to her parents. And the lack of a bairn was highest among that list of reasons why a husband might be unhappy. But if they had a child; if they were happy in each other, they might make their vows permanent through a Bonding.**  
**

It would be a year and a day for him and Lothiriel on the next full moon. In seven days.

_I'll be back for our Bonding, that is, if you still want a Bonding. _She had said before she left for Aldburg.

_Don't be ridiculous, Lothiriel._

Is that what had been on her mind too that night, that they might remain childless? And then to have those raw wounds rubbed with the salt of Swefred's words. Eomer gritted his teeth.

"Yes sire, it's understood."

Hilda rushed again to pick up the pile of papers strewn on the ground.

"I can clean it up," Eomer said.

"It's just that, she has ones of you, too, sire."

"What do you mean?"

"She's drawn the most of you," Hilda said, searching his face, "which is as it should be, of course."

She stretched out a stack of parchment and all but thrust them at him. He retrieved them, bemused.

Hilda's hand was warm on his arm. She tilted her head and looked at the first picture.

"Looks just like you," she sighed, "She loved you very much, you know."

His throat was tight. He wanted to say - he wanted to say,_ probably not, Hilda_.

But he didn't. Instead Eomer said, "Thank you, Hilda."

Eomer wanted to put the papers down, but Hilda was right, it was him there, rendered in Lothiriel's expert hand.

He heaved a sigh and sat down. A window was open and a faint wind stirred the curtains. Otherwise all was still in the room, and there was no one else with him, no weeping ghosts.

No signs of Lothiriel as he had found her one evening early in their marriage.

He had heard the small, smothered, but unmistakable sounds from her chambers while he was finishing his evening ablutions.

Eomer didn't know why he didn't charge in then and there, why he waited awhile, until the sounds had stopped, before going through the door that adjoined his rooms to hers. Perhaps he was trying to give her a measure of privacy. Perhaps he was afraid of what he might find.

He needn't have bothered. She was fast asleep, faced away from him when he opened the door. Her dark hair billowed around her like a night's river caught in time.

He should have left then, but his eyes caught the flash of white under her hand. A letter must have come from Dol Amroth. She was crying because she was homesick, he thought, it was a natural thing.

But that did not stop him from walking closer to where her head lay pillowed on the table. She had already tucked the substance of the letter back in its envelope, but the address was written boldly in a determined hand. There was a seal across it of one of Dol Amroth's noble houses, a bright golden trumpet crossed with a sword.

**_House of Argalan_**

And there was a memory in Eomer's mind, of Imrahil saying, _it does not even bear mentioning, but there was one young man, Thalion of House Argalan, who went missing after the final battle. But between he and Lothiriel there was more friendship than flirtation, and you need not worry on that quarter. Lothiriel will make you a good wife, I know it._

_House Argalan._ The words on the paper accused.

Even the quiet tears, hidden away in her own room, even her exhaustion after reading the letter were accusations.

Maybe he should have woken her up, asked her. But it was a day for cowardice, he supposed. And so he let her sleep. He walked out of the chamber, his heart a stone in his stomach.

The next day he asked her if there was any news from home.

Lothiriel had quirked those lips in that same rueful smile and said, _Father plans, Elphir worries, Erchirion sails, and Amrothos, Amrothos will always be heartbroken. Life goes on._

He had waited, for days, thinking that she might speak of it to him. But she never did. And he was too heartsick to ask her anything more regarding Thalion of House Argalan.

* * *

A call sounded in the courtyard, and the cry of journeying birds woke Eomer to himself, almost surprised that he was still sitting in Lothiriel's chambers, in the wide red chair with the wind of spring coming through the open window.

He looked down, that the first paper in his hand.

It was expertly drawn. In it Eomer was faced off to one side, as if talking to one of his men. His head was tossed back, mid-laugh, his hand closed around a jeweled goblet. She had shaded in a short beard, cleanly shaved. She captured the widow's peak on his forehead, and each hair seemed to be drawn separately.

There was a great deal of detail in the picture. The scroll-work on the post behind him, the intricate needlework of the collar on his tunic, the detailing of his belt, the medallion hung around his neck.

Eomer frowned.

He only remembered it because Eowyn had given him such grief about it afterwards, as _she_ had hand sewn the collar for the tunic that he wore at her wedding feast, the one in Ithilien a year after her troth-plighting.

Eomer rode into Emyn Arnen that day, swearing to comport himself as would befit a King, and not act like the distraught brother who was being left behind to a monumental task by the one steady thing in his life. He promised to himself he would be happy for Eowyn, as happy as she was happy.

Yet by the end of the night Gimili - or was it Legolas - had managed to spill nearly an entire flagon of the finest Lossarnach wine all over Eomer, ruining the fine shirt and all its fine stitching. Eowyn had made her displeasure known clearly enough the next day, when he found his morning water switched with horse piss. His sister was only more cunning when she was happy in her life.

Had Lothiriel been there, that night in Ithilien? She must have been, to render him in such detail. He supposed they must have been introduced that evening, but it was all a blur for him.

He did remember dancing with all of the women that night. Every single one, the pretty ones and the plain, despite a sore leg that turned into a limp by the end of the evening.

He danced because he didn't want to think about why he should be so angry to see Eowyn here, happy as she was, in delight as she was among these dark-haired strangers. He drank too much, as did Glimi, who went on to ruin his shirt.

He must have danced with Lothiriel, Eomer thought. By this picture, he must have made quite an impression. But why couldn't he remember? And why did she – with such startling clarity – remember him? Was he rude to her? What could he have said to her?

Now, sinking back in that large red chair, still smelling like the scent she wore, with this picture, this secret that she kept involving him – almost felt as if she was here with him, sitting by him.

And Eomer felt the inexpressible frustration of these last few days of a fruitless search drain out of him a little, as it always did, whenever he worked through some seemingly insoluble problem with her.

She would say to him, _now be reasonable, Eomer. _

She used to talk him down all the time with that, in her low voice, telling him to work with what was before them and not with what hopes he had, the dreams he had for his people. _We'll start where we are, _she used to say_._

_Now be reasonable, Eomer, _he would almost hear her saying, the ghost of Lothiriel haunting him just beyond the ranges of his hearing, _be reasonable. So I had some pictures that I didn't show you, I can't be expected to share everything with you, can I?_

_You never did share everything with me_, he thought.

He flipped through the stack of pages. They were all pictures of him.

There were smaller studies that pieced together into larger scenes. A few words went along the bottom to some of the more detailed pictures, to commemorate an occasion.

_Handfasting_ He read. It must have been his and Lothiriel's, in the spring of the following year. He was grinning broadly and toasting his cup to someone unpictured to his left.

_Friends ._One of him in his plate armor facing off with Firefoot. Eomer laughed. She had somehow managed to make their expressions of ire seem identical.

_King._ A broadsheet of him in full armor and regalia, helmet in place and a scowl like a permanent fixture on his face. Beneath him Firefoot was fully fitted for battle and pawed the ground.

_Husband._ A wrinkled page showing him in profile, mouth slightly agape in sleep, the sheets surrounding him like clouds.

Eomer paused, and the memory came unbidden of those days when she would wake him in that darkness before first dawn with a foot moving along his leg. And he would turn to find her soft and pliant in his arms, the dark of her hair between them. He could still remember her nearly silent shivers, pressed against him, her breathless calling of his name. If she called him sir, then, it was only in jest; for they were equals those mornings in the blue light. How Aldhelm used to tease him later, when he was unable to wipe the smile from his face.

He shook his head.

Then came a series of little sketches, all of him face-on through a range of expressions. Mostly frowns; she perfected the crick on his brow when he was angered, and then drew him with a sideways gaze, full of mistrust. Another one of him staring straight across the paper with a fierce scowl.

Eomer looked between the first studies and the later ones. She liked to draw him laughing, as the first pictures showed, but there was never one of him smiling facing the viewer. Those were only done on an oblique angle, always as if the Eomer in the picture looked at someone over the viewer's shoulder.

He rifled through the last pages and saw himself in various stages of hesitation, confusion, irritation, and frustration.

All except for the last picture in the pile. He almost did not see it, the paper was so thin that it stuck to the page before. Eomer teased the edges of the page apart with thumb and forefinger until it came fluttering into his hand.

It was the same picture as the first that Hilda had handed him, the picture of him at Eowyn's wedding, but this was a rougher sketch of the fair copy he first beheld.

On this page it seemed that she was trying to learn the lines of his face for the first time. His hair was not drawn in except for a few strands as she tinkered and varied the planes of his face. A larger nose was replaced with the one he had, and smaller sketches ran along side with the finer aspects of his shirt and his belt.

Lines were rubbed out, drawn over, and erased again. The paper was so fine to the touch that it was almost see-through with the handling it had received.

Through a near-translucent corner he saw writing on the back of the paper.

Except for her scattered labels, they were the only words that she had written in all these pages filled with his image. Eomer was intrigued; he turned the paper over, and read -

**_She came upon him at a time of great joy and feasting. Then all memory of her pain departed from her, and she fell into an enchantment, for he was the fiercest and most beautiful of all the children of Erol._**

_**As the sun upon the edge of steel, as the voice of rushing rivers, as the warmth of fire breaks a winter's chill, such was his glory and his strength, and in his face was a shining light**._

Eomer might not have read much of the lore of Gondor, but he knew this one.

But in the tale it was Beren who saw Luthien in the summer woods, under the stars of Neldoreth as she danced upon the unfading grass beside the Esgalduin. It was Beren who fell into enchantment -

"_F__o__r Luthien was the most beautiful of all the Children of Iluvatar,"_ Eomer whispered to himself, "_Blue was her raiment as the unclouded heaven, but her eyes were grey as the starlit evening."_

He did not have all the ensuing lines, but he had these:

"_As the light upon the leaves of trees, as the voice of clear waters, as the stars above the mists of the world, such was her glory and her loveliness; and in her face was a shining light._"

No, he could not mistake the words that Lothiriel had chosen, nor the form she put them in. And there could be no mistaking what Lothiriel had meant by those words.

_She loves you rotten._

_She loved you very much, you know._

There was a pain in his chest.

Storm-grey eyes seemed to regard him, steadily, steadily across time.

_I'd come after you myself, with both Gondor and Rohan at my side. Because you are the heart of this place, Eomer._

"My God," he said, "My God."

There was a question in his heart. But for once the ghost of Lothiriel had no reasonable answer for Eomer.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: A word of caution, as there is minor character death in this chapter.

* * *

**Chapter IV**

_Even here, even at the beginning of love_

_Her hand leaving his face makes_

_an image of departure_

_And they think_

_they are free_

_to overlook this sadness._

_- Louise Gluck, "The Garden"_

Lothiriel saw her mother last night.

Not the wistful figure in the portrait that stood in Father's study, but a woman full-formed, with sharp gray eyes and a crooked smile. For a moment Lothiriel did not recognize who stood before her, and thought rather that she looked into her own face, as it would seem in some twenty years.

Then, suddenly, there was so much to say and no voice with which to say it.

Her mother reached across the space between them, that darkness dividing life and death.

Her hand was not cool or spectral. It was a strong hand, burning warm on Lothiriel's.

_The birds have flown. Only the cage is left, my daughter._

"Mother?"

Lothiriel blinked, and realized she was sitting up on her pallet, speaking into the darkness.

It was said that when old kings of Numenor came to the end of their days, they saw shadows of those they had lost in this life. It was said that when Imrazor's life drew to its close he spoke the whole day with the air, with those who had slipped beyond the curtain; and that the voices and visions of ghosts came closer and closer until the man himself had passed away like the rain over the mountains.

A long time later Lothiriel managed to fall asleep against the gentle rocking of the ship, but her mother did not come again.

* * *

The journey downriver was calm and unhurried. Lothiriel had her own chamber belowdeck, though it was more of a closet where she slept upon a straw pallet on the floor. But it was clean and high-walled; the one place where she could be without her chains.

There was a window, its circumference bolted with iron to discourage escape.

Though the only escape here was into the rushing water of the Anduin; and into the sea.

A knock came, and the Jurist stood outside the slot in the door with her chains.

"Put your hands out, please," he said.

Lothiriel had one hour of fresh air on deck each day. Her wrists were shackled behind her back, through the door. The Jurist, who was leader of this operation, and another sailor stood on the other side, and while one watched the other secured chains upon her feet, chains that were short of a full stride so she had to shuffle.

The call of gulls and seabirds rang in her ears as she emerged on deck. Lothiriel blinked. Two full days on the Anduin and the ship was already close to the mouth of the river, close enough to the call of the sea.

The small vessel was manned by a mix of Corsair and Haradrim sailors. It was well-built, its bones strong and beautiful, cased in black paint and rigging, oiled and slick like a raven coursing swift through the Anduin.

The crew had the long-practiced calm of competent men. They flew the pennant of the White City aloft, and altered enough of the ship's sails as to make it look like one of the many Corsair vessels taken after the siege, and re-appropriated for the use of Gondor. Those who stood at the prow wore only the midnight blue garb emblazoned with the White Tree.

The men wore no kohl around their eyes, kept their beard trimmed, their hair unbraided and flowing, their faces bared to the sun. With such a garb, a man of Harad could pass for a man of Gondor in the dim light, in profile. It surprised Lothiriel how easily mortal enemies were made to look the same.

She had observed crew for a day and a half, found them efficient, courteous, and calm. They were not on edge like her last captors.

Lothiriel could be calm and clever, too. But in a day and a half she found no way off this ship. Not any way that led back home, at least.

Now, up on deck, the Jurist looped a thick rope through the chains on her feet as a tether, and then opened his hands, indicating that she was free to wander about.

* * *

Two night ago when she had climbed aboard the black ship and looked into the face of the man who called himself Jurist, for one second Lothiriel thought she was caught in one of Amrothos' terrible practical jokes.

He wore the blue garb of the soldiers of Gondor. A black arm band distinguished him from the rest of his company. And there was the dark waving hair that fell to the shoulders, the sun-bronzed skin, the light gray eyes and that proud crag of a nose that was twin to her cousin Faramir's.

She would know. She had drawn it enough times.

Lothiriel fought the urge to reach out to this stranger who looked so like Faramir; to call to him. _Kinsman,_ she wanted to say, _Cousin._

The man looked at her and said, "I am called Jurist."

And there the resemblance ended, for his voice was deep and harsh, as if he had breathed in fire and the burn of it scarred his throat forever. Faramir's was a rich mellow tenor, smooth as running waters. He did not ground out words, as this man did, they poured from him like a river.

Even today, the resemblance was eerie. The mere sight of the Jurist called to some unconscious part of her; it gave her a sense that he was to be trusted, that he was steady as Minas Tirith, as her cousin was.

She knew he was not, she knew he was the enemy. But Lothiriel couldn't also help but feel as if Faramir were standing with her to give her strength, a weapon hidden in plain sight.

For Lothiriel and Faramir had an understanding that was near telepathy: they were both the youngest of their houses, quiet watchful children while their brothers were boisterous and brash. In easier times she would lament of all her woes to him - and it was mostly about Amrothos – only to see that guarded face burst into laughter. He would say, _Oh Lothiriel, you wouldn't believe how often that happened to me with Boromir._

She was in awe of Faramir, she admired him and loved in him in the same breath and it was sometimes difficult to tell which she felt more. And it was Faramir's happiness with the White Lady of Rohan that convinced Lothiriel she could find something similar with its king.

"Jurist," Lothiriel said.

"'A fair eve, lady," he bowed.

It did not help that the Jurist was mild-mannered and courteous with her. He was silent, often, a silence that drew out words. And when he asked questions, they shone like flares into the attic of her mind.

Dangerous, she reminded herself, he was dangerous above all.

"Jurist, you asked me when I came aboard if the men you hired to abducted me had treated me ill."

He waited.

"What would you have done, if I had said yes?"

Without hesitation he answered, "I would have given them justice."

And then, as if to make sure that she understood him, he smiled at her – though it was no more than a baring of his teeth, and a flare of something bright in his eyes – and said, "I would have killed them."

"For what, though?"

"I would have killed them," he said, "for violating the words they spoke to me. Do you regret that you let them go, the ones who took you?"

That first night, the Jurist had asked for her name as she stood on the deck of the vessel with the Anduin wavering beneath her.

She gave it to him and he took it in as if drinking from a vessel:_ Lothiriel, daughter of Imrahil, wife of Eomer, Queen of the Riddermark and Princess of Dol Amroth._ She still said, Queen of the Riddermark, for it was what they expected of her.

He had watched her face while she made this recitation, taking the measure of her titles, and then taking the measure of what was left when those titles blew away in the wind like dust.

Then he reached out a warm hand and turned her face gently to the side, as if looking for some secret mark within her skin, some brand that marked her as who she said. Lothiriel fought to keep her face still, to breathe normally.

"What proof have you that she is who she says?" he asked the men behind Lothiriel.

There was moment of hesitation.

"She rode a white horse that was descended of the Meara," the blue-eyed man's voice came, "she traveled with protection, her men gathered to save her when we gave chase."

"What else?" said the Jurist.

"She wears the ring of the horselord on her hand."

"So it would seem. What else?"

Lothiriel waited.

"A sapphire," said the blue-eyed man behind her, finally, "With the swan of Dol Amroth upon the band."

"I see no sapphire."

The blue eyed man and his band were outnumbered at least two to one, and their reward sat close by. Lothiriel could almost see the thoughts fly one after another through his head. Finally he relented and drew forth a chain from under his mail, at the end of which glittered the blue stone.

"See here, she gave me this of her own will," he said, and under the defiance in his voice there was fear.

"You are robbers and kidnappers and brigands all," the Jurist looked upon the great stone, but made no move to retrieve it. Instead he narrowed his eyes at Lothiriel once more, turned her head with his hand again, and looked at her in the looming darkness as if he could still spot the fading bruise upon her cheek, where Cale had struck her.

"Did they harm you, lady?" He asked, quietly.

At that moment she knew: the lives of those men meant nothing to this one.

She heard the sharp inhales behind her, the men starting to protest. Lothiriel thought, if I said yes, it would be no lie, and at least a little bit could be avenged of me.

But looking at the Jurist it was as if Faramir were there, too, looking into her face, waiting for her pronouncement on the fate of these men.

She thought about the neat white row of stitches, placed just the day before, in Cale's arm.

She said, "You may let them go."

This evening, standing next to her and watching moonlight shatter on the water beneath them, the Jurist said, "I do not think there is an element in your mercy that would turn those men aside from their evil ways. They will think you weak, for it. For nothing short of the sword would change them."

"You're right," Lothiriel said, "the mercy was for me."

He was quiet again. It almost seemed that speaking pained him, it grated so on the chords of his voice, that silence had become his natural state. They stood side by side, in silence, perfectly still, with only his eyes moving over the ship and over the dark water.

"Jurist," she said, "do you know what awaits me?"

He looked into the water for so long that she thought he would never answer.

"I am bound not to lie to you," he said, "so I tell you that even though these are evil times, it is considered an uncivilized thing for a woman, a queen, to be tortured."

She did not know if that was a comfort.

"Is that so?"

"In the laws of my country, that is so," he said, "just as men answer for their actions on the edge of a blade, and traitors and spies by pain. The punishment is befitting the crime."

"And what is my crime, then?"

He hesitated. If she did not know better she would have said that it was conflict in that faint line between the black brows.

Faramir had always been able keep his emotions one level beneath the workings of his face, and Lothiriel always had trouble reading him. But occasionally certain things broke the surface – anguish, when he spoke about his father, and love, as when he would look in Eowyn's face.

But the Jurist had such a mask upon him that she could not know what it meant: that small line above the furrows of his brows.

"Your crime is that you are Rohan," he said finally, "and Rohan has given the tribes of Harad much grief."

Lothiriel remembered the knife-edged words of that man in Immin's Hill, the names he had thrown at her, his exhortation to be gone. The irony of the Jurist now, calling her Rohan, twisted like a cramp in her side. She wondered how many in the Mark believed that she could stand for them, stand for the Mark.

But no matter; it was no matter, now.

"Are you trying to start a war, Jurist?" she asked.

"Not I, lady," he said, "I am only a Jurist. I deal in the punishment of crime."

"But the ones who sent you, surely they had that end in mind, if they meant for you to succeed."

He was silent. She did not know if he was silent because he knew the answer and did not wish to tell her, or because he had none.

Lothiriel wondered what his name was.

"And what is to be my punishment, then," she said, "for being Rohan?"

And he said, "Death, lady. But the manner of it is something I, as your Jurist and the dealer of your death, have yet to determine."

* * *

That night, back in her cell, Lothiriel sat and considered the small line in the Jurist's brow.

Doubt. It must have been doubt, she thought. For he was a truthful man, and there was something soft and side-stepping about the answer that he had given her. _Your crime is that you are Rohan. _

He might as well have added, _I suppose._

Though it did not matter in the long run, if he doubted. The end would be the same.

Lothiriel had made a long study of people's faces. When she was very young she used to run from her schooling during market days and mingle among the people, watching their faces.

The faces fascinated her, the wrinkled smile of an old wreathmaker that fanned from his eyes all the way into his hair; the heavily painted eyes of a woman who sat beside her butcher husband, whose face would crumple in sorrow when she thought no one was looking.

There it was, Lothiriel thought, electrified. There was the raw essence of life, out in the open where everyone could see.

Father had found out, eventually. But instead of punishment, he had engaged Lothiriel a drawing master, and made market days a part of her routine.

_Catch the expression_, said her drawing master. _If you have the features, you might have the face of the man, but if you have the expression you come to his soul, those little corners of himself that he does not even know, shown to you in the open by the delicate muscles of the face._

And with Eomer, Lothiriel proceeded as an artist would.

She had taken in Eomer's expressions, as many as she could distinguish those first six months and cataloged them. At the beginning she had thought that his coldness was simply something she imagined. That his wariness was something only she perceived.

But the conclusions she came to were not reassuring.

He so very rarely smiled at her. That was the first clue.

A man in love with his wife would probably not frown so much at her, or so often. He would not save his smiles for his comrades-in-arms, and stare her down as one would an enemy across drawn lines of a battlefield. He was tender when they made love; but other than that, that puzzled look would come over him. He would scrutinize her across the fire as they sat there in the evening, as if attempting to see the thoughts inside her head.

She knew for certain that she puzzled and frustrated him, for that was what he showed to her, in his face.

Most days it did not seem like such a difference, for his actions were gentle and kind. There were small things that bolstered her, the small curve of his mouth when she raised a point in council that he had not hitherto considered, his tilted head when he listened to her go on about the roadblocks with her newest project.

But other days, when she could catch the doubt upon his face, the confusion and the uncertainty leveled against her - the weight of that difference between real love and its semblance, magnified through all the years their future life together, crushed her.

In her extended study of Eomer's moods, Lothiriel also noticed that he usually made up his mind about people within ten minutes of meeting them. On days of open court, she saw him size up lords and peasants with a running glance like a sieve through their character, catching only what was substantial, leaving the rest.

Those who deserved trust had his almost instantly; having been a commander of men, he was able to size up a situation in second, and determine who were his allies, and who stood against him.

There were notable exceptions, of course. He had mistrusted Legolas for a long time, Eomer told Lothiriel, laughing now. But it was a time of war, she thought, and there was that incident with the bow, the mutual threats of death.

Which led her back to their situation; nearly a year's marriage, and with what to show for it? Not a child. No, not that. Not even his easy laughter that he gave so freely to those men he trusted; only that sideways look of scrutiny, full of questions and doubt.

She should have known; she should have known that if he did not love her in the beginning, he would not love her at all. She wished that someone had told her, and so spared her this.

When she fell asleep that night, it was Anarien, the master of the aviary, who visited her. He was whole and smiling, younger than when she had last seen him. And around them the air was full of birdsong.

"Anarien," she said, "Anarien, I am alone, and I am afraid."

He smiled at her, a sad, sweet smile, and whistled into the air around him. A flock of blackbirds took to the bright spring sunlight, burst through the high stone ceiling of the aviary.

With rocks falling down all about them, Anarien took her arm and Lothiriel leaned down until her head was beside his mouth.

"The birds have flown," he whispered to her, and under his voice it seemed her mother was there too, whispering the words into her ears. _The birds have flown. _

"The cage is empty," she replied.

He smiled at her then, his face so close to hers that she could pick out the flecks of green in his hazel eyes. He smiled as if sharing a great secret, and then pulled out something from one of his innumerable pockets.

Anarien used to store all manner of things in his pockets: bird feed, balls of string, little bits of paper. Sweets he had given her when she was little invariably had to be brushed off before they were consumed. Now Lothiriel saw he held a short blade, brown with old blood.

She looked down to see his right arm bloodied and in tatters.

She tried to pull away; his hand tightened on her elbow.

No longer smiling, he said, "It helps to have something sharp."

And gently, he closed her fingers around the rusted, blood-stained knife.

This time Lothiriel woke and wondered if she was going mad. She wondered if these shades were not so much harbringers of her death as the figments of a dissolving mind.

There was something in her right hand. Sometime during her dream she had removed her wedding ring and now had it clutched in her fingers. The edge of the round crest bit into her palm.

Lothiriel examined the ring. Through her port side window the moon came in and caught on the rounded edge of the crest that protruded over the band beneath. Lothiriel knew that it could be filed against the iron bolts of her windows to a razor's edge.

She must have sat there for a long time, staring at her ring. She had been thinking about escape without any fruitfulness for the last two days. Perhaps her mind had finally come to a solution.

She looked at her ring, and then at the flesh on her wrist. It would be plenty, if one had the will to do it.

"Is this what you meant, Anarien?" she whispered, "Do you mean for me to go down the same path you did?"

* * *

They spilled out of the mouth of the Anduin as the sun was setting the next evening. The Jurist collected Lothiriel for her hour on deck.

The Ethir Anduin was behind them. The isle of Tolfalas was a dim and distant line on the horizon. The ship had slowed its progress, the billowing sails drawn up and away.

There was no seeing Dol Amroth from here, Lothiriel knew. But she willed her mind to conjure it there on the dark horizon, the domed egg-shell of the Great Hall, the spires flying above the castle of the Prince, and her father, standing between the great pillars, casting a watchful eye over the flickering lights of his city.

_Goodbye, father._

And, beyond the high snowy mountains, Rohan.

Edoras, the golden roof of the Meduseld catching the last rays of the sun. The winking firelight of the city, the soft weave of wind over the long grass.

Eomer.

If she were home now...

For a moment it felt as if life must go on as it did before she was taken, as if she had left a copy of herself behind, and _that_ Lothiriel would take up her projects now that she was gone. And that other Lothiriel, who was never locked in an ox cart, who was never told she must die, would take her daily rides on an Almaren still whole and beautiful, near the dusk on the plains before the Meduseld.

And perhaps Eomer was there, too, watching her ride as he did sometimes when the light was failing, looking for her to return to the stables as if worried she might ride off into the night and never return.

Almaren was always able feel how Lothriel tensed when Eomer came near, and once when he had reached out to run his hands through her white withers she had bit him, rather hard, on the arm and left a long trail of saliva over his shirt.

"And how is that beast of yours treating you?" he had asked Lothiriel after one of her evening rides, staying well away this time from the flash Almaren's broad, strong teeth.

"She is wonderful," she replied, "she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."

"She is a bad-tempered, spoiled brat," he tossed back, and then ducked as the white head shook and huffed in his direction.

Lothiriel reined her horse back, laughing.

"I will never understand, lady, how you have managed to tame all these ill-humored cast-offs to your side," he said, "you've quite enchanted Firefoot, and Grimund talks more to you than he has spoken to me in my whole life."

The bond of insomniacs, Lothiriel thought.

"It's like you all have some secret language," Eomer continued, looking up at her with a frown, "that you speak to one another when I have my back turned, or under the level of my hearing."

The last rays of the sun caught him sweating; his hair blew in his face. He was frowning at her again, as if conversation with her were some difficult terrain where he must navigate with care.

He was as beautiful as ever.

"We speak the same language, for they are my _particular_ constituency, sir," she said, "the irate, the bad-tempered, the cast-offs."

He raised an eyebrow at her, "sounds like an unstable lot."

"I suppose I will need to win their king to my side, eventually," she grinned at him, "if I am to have any hope of keeping my throne."

He raised his second eyebrow, trying to look severe. Amusement danced at the corner of his mouth; it warmed her heart.

"Is that so? And how do you propose to do that, Lothiriel?"

"Oh, I don't know."

And suddenly she realized that she had no answer for him, that he had accidentally voiced the insoluble problem that had faced her all along.

_How do you propose to _make _me fall in love with you, Lothiriel?_

The banter was gone. The lightness went out of her. Her smile slipped.

_I don't know. I don't know how,_ she thought. _For y__ou were strong and gentle and everything I had ever wanted. I just never thought that I wouldn't be - couldn't be - the one you want._

_It just seemed to cruel a fate, then. At the beginning._

_But I now know it to be possible._

Eomer waited.

She started a sentence, and then thought better of it. She felt herself blinking like mad.

Lothiriel said, "I suppose stubbornness is half the fight, sir."

He looked surprised at that. He had expected something else.

Then he came close and extended a hand to help her dismount. His hand was large and warm on hers, his eyes searching, his face gathered in a frown.

She had confused him again, Lothiriel knew. She had pulled real emotion into their lighthearted repartee. She had lifted the cover from the dark well of her mind and forced him to look into it with her.

She gave him what smile she could. Her throat felt like it had constricted on itself.

"Nay, lady," he said finally, his features soft all of a sudden, and she saw tenderness there.

He drew her hand to his lips; a soft kiss.

"In my experience," Eomer said, "stubbornness is nearly all of the fight."

And he motioned for the groom to take Almaren, and held her hand all the way into the candelit hall.

For a second she felt as if they had come to a clearing in the forest, and saw each other clear.

For a second.

_Goodbye, Eomer._

* * *

All preparations were ready and the dark came on. The sky was like a piece of cloth taking dye; layer after layer of deep blue drew across it. In the night the black ship was a breath of shadow on the water.

Beside her the Jurist inclined his head. Black sails opened to full billow and the wheel was turned. Southward they went, slicing across the water under silence of night.

That night she opened her eyes in the night to find an elven soldier, bloodied and insensate, lying on her floor.

"Who are you?" she said in Sindarin, in a dream that seemed like waking.

He turned with a moan, tawny eyes looked for her in the darkness.

"Corin," he said.

There were no visible marks on his body but for the small stains of blood upon his lips, and the pain in his face.

"Sister," he said, "this is an evil place. Begone from here."

"What have they done to you, Corin?"

Then it was as if she could see him, truly, in a cage of marble in a courtyard of stone. Alone in his cell, with only the pain as his companion.

"They have killed me," he said, "They have killed me, but they will not release me."

And there was no hope in his eyes.

"Sister, do not come to this evil place. They will surely kill you too."

* * *

The great Havens of Umbar came into view, full of color and people, full of ship both dark and light. It was barely dawn but the harbor was thronged with merchants and sailors, in the exchange of goods that varied from cloth and bright jewels to men, women and children.

But Lothiriel saw none of these. She was below decks, taking her first bath since Aldburg.

"We will arrive today and go before the city," the Jurist said when he woke her from sleep, "I thought you might wish to look the part."

A large basin held collected rain water; it was icy cool against her head as she washed her hair and rinsed it with a fine soap smelling faintly of lemon and spices. A dress had been laid out for her, small clothes too. The hem of the plain white cloth fell only halfway down her calves. They had not reckoned her height. Her feet were very pale against the ground. No shoes, the Jurist had said.

Finally, Lothiriel reached up to plait her hair.

The courts of Gondor and Dol Amroth both loved elaborate up-sweeps, hair braided and tucked, hair that behaved. It was how Lothiriel had worn hers all her life, in a great coronet braid around her head.

But in Rohan, women went about with golden locks spilling over. No matter the weather, Eowyn let her bright hair blow in the wind.

One day Lothiriel tried it, conducted her daily business in the Meduseld with her hair down, feeling oddly undressed.

Lothiriel still remembered that day; for that same evening Eomer had returned from a short patrol, he came around a corner and stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of her.

She remembered how his eyes had widened, the pupils going dark, as he reached out to run a hand through her loosed hair, all the way down to the small of her back, how he had clasped her about the waist and drew her against him.

They stood face to face, silent, in a darkened hallway of the Meduseld. His breath fell lightly on her cheek, and he smelled of the rain and the grass, of spring. Lothiriel, transfixed by the slow path of his fingers combing through her hair, was afraid to even blink, lest she break the spell.

"Wear it down from now on, for me," he had said, thickly, as if unable to form the proper words. His eyes flared. And then, still in full armor, he lifted her in his arms and carried her to their chambers.

Lothiriel found her hands stilling in her hair, and then loosening the first tentative plaits. She shook her hair free, like a woman of the Riddermark.

She secured the ring Eomer had given her around her thumb, its edges now with the bite of a fine blade. She walked onto the deck, into the first warm rays of a foreign sun, to where the Jurist stood holding her chains.

* * *

Their ship had tossed anchor at the very heart in the Havens of Umbar. Above her on the mainmast a red flag flew. The path had been cleared for their arrival.

The chains that he put on her now where not the ones from before. These were heavy iron manacles around her wrists and ankles, and she struggled to keep her arms steady, struggled to lift her feet with every step. They had no other purpose but to tire her; to make her stumble before the eyes of others.

The Jurist walked beside her, but he did not touch her or attempt to help her.

Dockhands stopped their loading to watch as she came down the steps of the vessel. Onlookers were beginning to gather on the streets, with black-garbed guards lining the road about every ten feet. Their soft murmuring was like a buzzing bee that came too near Lothiriel's ear.

_School your face. Show them no fear._

"It is anathema to interfere with the Judgment of those who are go into Cages." The Jurist said. She supposed that he wanted to reassure her.

But she found little reassurance on the faces of those gathered. Curiosity was there, but so too was anger, so too was contempt and hatred. She had never been so hated by so many people, all at once. It felt like a heaviness crowding itself into the small space of her chest, crowding out what room there was for her heart, her lungs.

The way was long. The stone under her feet grew warm as the sun climbed over the horizon and spilled its gathered heat over the city.

A man's voice rose out of the crowd, followed by a woman's shrill cry, shouting accusations and insults that Lothiriel didn't understand. She did not look at them, but she saw that the Jurist did, and that his hand went to the hilt of his sword.

There were onlookers following her on either side, pushing their way through the crowd, their faces bent to hers. Several rocks flew through the air, one missing her temple by inches.

Lothiriel wondered if she would even make it into the city alive.

"The punishment is death for those who attempt to interfere with her Judgment," the Jurist shouted, and then seemed to repeat those words in Haradic. The steel made no noise as he unsheathed his sword and held it before him.

The murmuring in the crowd died down a little, but not by much.

"You could have told me I might be torn apart by the mob," she said.

"They will have to get through me first," he said. And it would have been reassuring, except that he was leading her too, to death.

Though Lothiriel thought she might prefer his version, to the one presented to her now.

She saw the men who stood closest to the street holding back those behind them. She wondered what she had done – what could she have done – do deserve this.

_If Eomer were here,_ she thought, _he could probably clobber all of them to death with these chains._

But Eomer wasn't.

She heard a running step behind her, and turned to find a man nearly upon her. His eyes were wide with rage, his mouth open upon a curse. He was old; his skin had been long baked by the elements, lined with care. The sun shone upon the edge of a blade.

Lothiriel willed herself not to flinch from him, but failed. She threw her arms before her as if to ward him off. But there was a scream, and then the sound of a warm spray. In the air there rose the smell of blood, unmistakable.

That was the first blood on her white dress, that day.

The jurist did not need to swing his sword another time for that man. But he did for the two who came up behind him; a man and a woman, the man taller than he by nearly a head and with at least three stones more of muscle.

Steel sang and the Jurist, garbed in black, moved like the shadow of death across those stones, and such screams rent the air that for a second Lothiriel wondered if she had walked onto a battlefield.

She stood, petrified, and watched.

When it was over, the Jurist took her by the arm and made her look away from the man lying on the stones, belly split open, and the woman beside him with a red gash on her throat.

"Keep walking," he said.

It occurred to her how preposterous it was, that he should risk his life for her now, at this moment.

They had reached the gates of the city. The stone carving of a great death's head opened its jaw, the skull tilted back as if unable to fill its ravenous appetite, all the while beneath its crooked teeth the people lined and watched.

None came forward now.

There was a buzzing in Lothiriel's ears.

Past the gate, she could see the Cages, arrayed in a row before the center building of the city. She counted ten, all structures of white marble, with slender bars and beams, almost airy, indeed, almost beautiful.

Bird cages, she thought to herself.

"Either way, my death is to be spectacle," she said, "and you would call your way justice?"

"That may be said of any public execution," he returned calmly, "and even you call them justice, save that this one is yours."

"Your country sent men to aid an evil power, to conquer a free nation when they should have aided us. Your men died from the stupidity and greed and avarice of their masters."

The Jurist was silent for a time, watching, assessing the crowd. His sword was still bare at his side, its blade stained nearly black.

"It may be so," he finally said, "but your sentence is inexorable. One enters the Cage and one must die."

They walked on.

She thought he was done, but after a little while longer, he spoke again, his voice even rougher than usual.

"Listen to me," he said, "You are here to expiate Rohan's crimes, but it is _you_ who must die. You must die to all that was yours, all that is you, and all that you could have been. It is not a small thing, the ending of a life, the passing of Judgment. This is why I was sent; this is why I have slain men and women who sought to take that away from you, because they knew the law.

"And so I would waste no more of your remaining hours asking why you are here, Lady. I would look to your gods for the keeping of your soul."

There was one cage that stood empty, farthest to her right.

Prisoners of the cages, some standing, some laying down, turned their faces to her as she approached. But Lothiriel's eye was drawn by the glimpse of bright yellow hair, braided in the fashion of elves, and an outstretched hand.

And the face, that face, turned toward her, seemed to call to something from within her dreams.

"What was his crime?" she asked the Jurist.

"He had assumed the garb of a soldier of Harad," said the Jurist, "came behind our lines, spied upon us, and used his arrows to kill one of the tribal lords of the Haradrim."

They came closer to the elf, now. She could see the rictus of pain on his face, the speckles of blood upon his lips, the red that glazed his white trousers, and the sprays of red and black on the floor of his marbled prison.

"And his punishment?"

Blue eyes opened from beyond the cage and found hers.

The Jurist said, "Some of Jurists tend to be more… literal in their application of punishment. As for him, he was made to swallow the barbed heads that remained in his quiver of arrows."

Lothiriel stumbled and fell against the hard marble of the pavement. Jeers from the crowd. Her hands burned with pain.

She was next to where the cage where the elf lay. She smelled it, then, the sweet stink of decay issuing through his pale lips, the thick taste in the back of her tongue of blood and putrefaction. He was dying from the inside out.

And Lothiriel recognized him.

"Corin."

"Sister," he breathed, "they have killed me, but they will not let me go."

Then she picked herself up, stood, and followed the Jurist into the shade of the white building, with the soft calls of the elf sounding behind her.

* * *

The Jurist ushered her into a small cell that stood alone in an empty white chamber, done like a farce of a court room. It was only herself there. Sunlight streamed through high-vaulted windows and threw their shadows upon the ground. The Jurist had sheathed his sword and disappeared behind a door, leaving her locked in.

Lothiriel fingered the ring, Eomer's ring, on her finger.

_Waste no more of your remaining hours asking why you are here__. _

_Look to your gods for the keeping of your soul._

A voice spoke in the silence.

"You shouldn't do it, you know," Thalion said, slouching next to her on her bench, his long legs crossed at the ankles and his hands in his pockets with elbows stuck out, the way he used to sit when he lived.

"Thalion," she said, "They are going to kill me. I am going to die."

"Hm," he looked at her calmly, "I know. I'm sorry."

"I'm afraid, Thalion."

"Remember what you told Amrothos and me that day, long ago? One of the mind-healers from the Houses had come after Anarien killed himself, and he said something to you. Something that made an impression."

"What was it?"

"He said there are some people in this world who will kill themselves no matter what, and there are some who won't. That some are able to endure endless emotional pain, and still not commit self-slaughter. Do you remember what you said, after you told us that?"

"I said," Lothiriel remembered, "I want to be that last person."

"And I said,_ that's my girl_," his armor was silver and unmarred, his hair burnished bronze in the light, and when he smiled, the choice was easy.

* * *

"I have spoken to the Jury and we have agreed upon your punishment."

The Jurist returned while she dreamed. He was clad all in white now, having removed his blood-stained garb. From the heels of his boots to the collar that covered his throat, all was white as bleached bone. His raw voice grated and echoed under the domed roof.

"For the crimes of Rohan against Harad, I give you a queen's death," he said, grey eyes upon hers.

"You will be kept within your cell with no nourishment for as long as it will take for you to die. But water will be given to you each day until that time comes. This is so that my people may gaze upon you as you pass through your last days, and find some degree of their hatred avenged in your slow wasting and your death."

He did not ask if she had any words, but led her out of the cell and took away her chains. There was no more need for them now.

And then the gate was swinging slowly open, letting in the sun, letting in the square shadows of the Cages.

He said, "I am the one who shall bring you water each day. I can stop bringing it to you, if that is what you desire. But it is painful and undignified to die of thirst. For hunger you will cease to feel, but thirst claws at you until the end."

He looked out into the sun of the court yard, and then at her.

"Are you composed enough to go now?"

Lothiriel did not answer him. She brushed her long hair behind her. She smoothed out the wrinkles of her dress, already stained red on its hem. The pavement was hot and blinding white under her feet as she emerged in the mid-morning sun.

They had gathered in a great crowd before the barricades. A murmur rose as she came down. She kept her eyes down and her feet moving slowly as she could.

The sun poured down all around her. It was not the cool spring sunshine of Rohan. This light seemed to peel her away layer by layer through flesh and sinew into her bones, until she was merely the wind and the air.

And as the Jurist turned toward her cage, Lothiriel broke from him and ran. Her feet moved swiftly. The ground sizzled under her bare soles. She had always been a good runner.

The elf lay there, his eyes open and glazed. The smell of death gathered around him. A fly buzzed.

"Corin," she said in Sindarin, "brother, will you let me help you?"

His eyes blazed at her, and he nodded. He was too weak to do it himself, but he covered Lothiriel's hand with one of his as she sought the faint beat of life in him.

Lothiriel knew where to find it, she had felt for it often enough in her patients. And some nights, lying by Eomer as he slept, she would keep her fingers on his pulse and let the beat of it lead her, like the map of stars above a dark ocean, to where he was.

Without hesitation, Lothiriel dug the sharp edge of her ring into the artery of Corin's wrist.

She had never cut into the soft flesh of someone's wrist with a knife; she had never cut someone so irreparably, with her intent to harm. But Lothiriel did not falter. She pressed with all of her might and felt flesh and sinew separate beneath her fingers, and then turned the ring so that it cut upwards, tracking along the length of the artery. He was so thin and wasted that it did not take much effort.

The warm blood was a pulsing spray against the side of her cheek, her neck. It ran down her arm, down her white gown, and there was a roar in the crowd, but she couldn't hear them for the rush of her own blood in her ears.

She could only see those pale, bluish lips twist upward.

"Thank you," he was saying, "thank you."

And his unbloodied hand came up and held her face to his while he murmured, his lips against her forehead, something, some benediction she could not hear with the roaring of the crowd, with the beat of her heart in her throat.

_That's my girl, _Thalion would have said.

Arms came around her shoulders and drew her back. Her face and hands were slick with blood, the warmth of it crawled down the side of her neck, pooling a little in her collarbones and marking a slow trickle into her bodice.

The crowd's roar filled her ears.

The Jurist was expressionless when she turned to face him. He plucked the ring Eomer had given her from her fingers and tossed it away into the dirt like it was nothing. He wrenched her arms behind her and steered her towards her own enclosure. There was no gentleness in his hold.

"That was his sentence. It was not your place to take it from him."

_But it was my place, _she thought, _for did you not tell me to look to my soul?_

Beside them the crowd shouted abuse. Several of them pelted dirt at her. But none of them dared bring weapons to fling, not after the spectacle this morning.

Unceremoniously the Jurist pushed her into her cage and began doing the locks up, chanting words under his breath. And then he placed a full pitcher of water just inside the door, the smooth rounded wood thin enough to pass through he bars.

The Jurist stood back, and seemed to consider her for a second.

"You did not save the easy path for yourself," he said.

"I have the easy path," she said.

There was no expression in his face.

He left.

Finally Lothiriel sat down. The blood was already drying in the desert air.

She looked out across the cells to where Corin was, and was no longer, to where they were taking his body away, wrapped in a cloth that had a red flower blooming on its sheet.

She took a sip of the clear, clean water and then dipped the edge of her skirt in it with shaking hands to wash her face. She tried to clean the blood out from beneath her fingernails, only find that her ring had sliced across three of her own fingers, and the cut was deep and it stung and bled.

_Eomer,_ she thought, _Eomer. I was brave, just then. Maybe at least you will know one day, that I was brave before I died._


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Warnings for this chapter: minor character death, violence, and oblique descriptions of marital intimacies. References of Eomer's cry of _Death! _pertain to the book version, where he calls out after finding Eowyn lying as dead on the Pelennor, not the movie.

* * *

**Chapter V**

_A night in summer. Sounds of a summer storm._

_The great plates invisibly shifting and changing —_

_And in the dark room, the lovers sleeping in each other's arms._

_We are, each of us, the one who wakens first,_

_who stirs first and sees, there in the first dawn,_

_the stranger._

_- "Prism," Louise Gluck_

Eomer had thought to take a night's rest at Minas Tirith and obtain fresh horses before he continued on to Dol Amroth, but the messenger knocked at midnight on his door, and behind him came Amrothos.

He had met Imrahil's third son before the Morannon. And while Imrahil's elder sons were always a little unapproachable, a little aloof, Amrothos had always been easy to speak with; jovial, almost giddy compared to his reserved, somber brothers.

Still, Eomer didn't count on the strange cramp in his ribs at the sight of that same blue-black hair, those same storm-grey eyes.

Eomer stood, bracing himself as if for a fight. For if Faramir had managed to lose Eowyn in a similar fashion, he would have the man's teeth, Prince of Ithilien or no.

If he were Amrothos, he would have come in with fists flying.

But by the time Eomer decided that he would take whatever was coming to him with as much grace as he could muster, Amrothos said, "brother," and took his arm like they had done once upon the field of battle.

"Brother."

"I came as soon as I heard that your party was spotted."

He looked at the goblet of mead sitting on the table. Eomer needed about two, nowadays, to get to sleep. Three if his luck was bad.

Amrothos said, "I, too, will need something stronger than tea."

They exchanged what news they had.

There was no word yet from Grimund or his party, which Amrothos too took to be good tidings.

"Your men must be pretty good," Amrothos said, "I only had one tentative report of Rohirrim crossing the Anduin and would have chalked it up to a faulty bale of our brown beer had I not suspected something else afoot."

"Grimund is one of my best," Eomer said.

"So he is," Amrothos ran a hand through his dark hair, "So what made you leave Edoras? Were you thinking to ride and see Father?"

"I was."

"If you want my advice," Amrothos grimaced, downing a large gulp of Eomer's mead, "don't."

"Don't?"

"Father buries himself in work. Elphir has to administer to the other half of Dol Amroth, and Erchirion has already sailed for the Havens of Umbar. I'm afraid that Father needs distractions, or results, and not company in his misery. He would be much more settled knowing that you are spending your time looking for Riel."

"My men are looking for her," Eomer corrected him.

"And you're delegating," Amrothos said.

"I'm sitting, waiting, doing next to nothing," Eomer said.

"You're acting reasonably, as a king should," Amrothos said, "but you can help me. I've been keeping close to the waterways, the sources of information, near Osgiliath reclaimed. Someone's put the word out among the less savory crowd near the crossings of Cair Andros that a great blue sapphire will be coming onto the night markets. They're waiting for the right person with the right price, and the bidding will be tomorrow."

"You think that –"

"It's the stone from Lothiriel's ring, set in a silver cygnet of Dol Amroth. Yes. They've probably taken the band off; it's too conspicuous," Amrothos said, "I'm going to the bidding. We find the stone, we find her kidnappers."

"How do you know this?"

Amrothos raised an eyebrow, mock-supercilious, with a hint of his past good humor back in his face, "You see, my lord Eomer, my father long despaired that I would ever make anything useful of my life. For Elphir was the statesman, Erchirion was the warrior, and Lothiriel was the healer. I was always the one who knew everyone and all their business, but had no head for state, no heart for war, and no stomach for leech-craft.

"And what kind of a skill, you might ask, is knowing everyone who needs knowing, and those who others believed to be below their notice?"

_A master of spies,_ Lothiriel whispered in Eomer's ear.

"Ah," Eomer said.

"Ah." Amrothos confirmed.

"So how am I to aid you?" Eomer asked, a little wary.

Amrothos' grin was a little demented.

"It's a mixed crowd up there, on the shores along Cair Andros. A well-monyed, well-landed merchant," he pointed to himself, "needs protection of both his goods and his person, especially if he is to go bidding for the blue stone. Protection intimidating enough to give others pause before they think of touching my purse, or my life. And so, Eomer, my brother, this is where you step into the fray."

* * *

The dawn cast the deep blue shadows in Eomer's chamber. There was the scent of rose and freesia and musk upon the air.

Against his neck she laughed a low laugh, nearly a hum upon his skin.

"The day is hours away, Lothiriel, and you are explaining to me what course a man's blood takes through his veins?"

_I am not merely explaining it to you, sir, I'm showing you the two arteries in your neck. How disappointing that you were not even paying attention._

"That is because you are making love to me."

_That is my prerogative, for you are my husband now. As I was saying, the largest vessel in the body comes from your heart and makes a turn in your chest and continues past your navel, where it splits in two…_

"Lothiriel, I can't – "

_Can't what? Pay attention? Of course you can. You are an intelligent and resourceful man, Eomer, with great powers of concentration. The aorta splits into two, deep within your belly, and its branches then come across the brim of your hip like so before moving down your thigh -_

Eomer closed his eyes as her mouth followed her words.

"I yield, lady. I am yours to do with as you will."

_Ah, but you never did yield, did you? _The ghost of Lothiriel whispered, all her playfulness gone.

_You liked me well enough in your bed, but you didn't yield to me, not really, not one single inch of your heart._

"I didn't know, Lothiriel. I didn't know that you loved me."

_Is that what was required of me, my lord? Was I supposed to risk all of my heart just so you might consider using yours?_

"Lothiriel, wait – "

But she was gone. She was but a dream, a memory.

Eomer woke, hard and aching, alone in his bed in a tower of stone, reaching for the ghost who haunted him.

But there was no soft hand along his thigh, no delicate lips upon his belly. He passed a hand over his sweat-covered face. There was only the sting of her words in his heart.

* * *

"Amrothos," Eomer said, "even if I am to be your bloody sell-sword, there is nothing in this outfit that serves the purpose of a guard. It's pure ostentation. There smallest dirk will get through these, these…"

What he was trying to describe was less clothing or armor than a strange contraption that Amrothos had presented him with that morning, telling him that if he wanted to help, he would have to look the part.

Far from Eomer's usual mail and armor, this getup simply involved one pane of slotted, lightweight interlocking plates and beads that was secured around his neck and fell to somewhere near his hip. It looked more decorative than functional; indeed, it could have no possible function.

"It's what the merchants of the south have their guards wear, Eomer," Amrothos replied innocently.

He also told Eomer that they didn't wear mail, or even a shirt beneath.

"I look like a Rider of Rohan, don't I? Why would I be wearing the clothes of a sell-sword from the south?"

"The outfit comes with a coat," Amrothos said, "If you were worried about getting cold."

"I was worried about losing my vital organs, Amrothos," Eomer bit out, "and if it does come down to a fight, I think you'd want your bodyguard to do his job. Seems a tad more important than flashing my chest at everyone present."

"Well," Amrothos said, "don't you think it would distract our enemies? To show them that you were confident enough not to wear armor."

"I _am_ going to be wearing my armor," Eomer said, "and not _this_."

"Not even if I let you keep your leathers underneath?"

"Not even then, Amrothos."

Eomer realized he'd been had a split second before Amrothos could hold no longer and dissolved into peals of laughter.

"It was worth a try, though," Amrothos said, falling against the chair, guffawing.

Eomer all but threw the contraption at his brother-in-law's head, and Amrothos didn't even duck, just sat there and let it catch him full in the face. Tears were beginning to eke out the corners of his eyes.

The sound of his laughter rang like a gong inside the stone room.

And Eomer found that he was laughing, too, for the first time in what seemed like forever.

"Hells, Amrothos!"

Lothiriel's youngest brother was gasping for air, waving his hand and saying something that Eomer couldn't decipher from the bellows of his mirth.

Finally he caught one word.

"Did you say '_brothel_?'"

Amrothos nodded, still gasping for breath, wiping the tears from his eyes.

"It's a long story," he said, "suffice to say that it was the favored outfit of one the ladies at the most reputed establishment near Dol Amroth. And she wore _nothing else_ when she… performed_,_ much less a full suit of armor underneath. You're a good sport, Eomer. Riel and I actually got Elphir to try it on and admit that he rather liked the look of it before our game was up.

"Oh, how she had laughed; Elphir turned so red, red to the roots of his hair, he, our most dignified brother. And Riel just laughed and laughed. I was on the floor. I couldn't even get up."

Amrothos's grin fell a little. He took the garment into his hands and ran his fingers over the smooth panes.

"It was her idea to start with, you know," he said, "before the war started in earnest. At the time I was… my head wasn't together. Riel thought I needed some cheering up. And so, she cheered me up."

His fingers clenched on the metal. A vein stood out on his forehead and it seemed like Amrothos wanted to say something else. But he didn't; he stood, and looked at Eomer.

"The day is getting on," he said, "your dingiest clothes - what you wore on the road here will do. It is a few hours' ride to Cair Andros."

* * *

Amrothos said one couldn't take horseflesh of Firefoot's caliber near the _Dove_ and be inconspicuous. Eomer grudgingly accepted the replacement that was given, a placid chestnut gelding who was a bit long in the tooth. Firefoot was not pleased.

The road to Cair Andros took them across the country, still not yet in spring, still waiting on the edge of the first rains, for the ground to come to its waking and all the life to come.

The town seemed to have been built up of flotsam and jetsam washed ashore on this bend of the Anduin. Even the center of the city boasted nothing more than a muddy road and some dark alehouses.

Eomer's head itched. He had rubbed mud into his hair to dull its shine and there was dirt on his face. Amrothos had darkened his own face into a swarthy tan; with a touch of kohl around the eyes and a surprisingly lifelike mustache glued on, he passed well enough for a resident of Near Harad.

Eomer would have picked their alehouse by the orderliness of its stables, but Amrothos was adamant that the _Grey Dove_ be their destination.

It was past suppertime when they settled down to a corner even less well lit by the wall sconces than the rest of the establishment. Two mugs of ale and two trenchers lined with some mysterious fish stew were ordered. Amrothos slouched, but kept his eyes moving on the inhabitants in the room. Eomer scowled at the upkeep of the alehouse, the inhabitants that populated it, the state of his meal - he was not a fastidious man, but by Erol the place was rank.

"That's it, keep frowning the way you always do," Amrothos instructed him, "grunting is good, too."

Eomer grunted at the serving wench when she brought their ales, though she was more matron or grandmother than wench. She grunted back, spat at his feet and tilted one hip flirtatiously at him.

"She likes you," Amrothos smirked.

It was going to be a long night, Eomer thought. He took a tentative sip of his drink, and found that the ale was surprisingly good.

He had some more.

"You might want to slow it down a bit, my man," Amrothos eyed him warily, "we'll be here a while. Nothing is likely to happen for another hour, yet."

"Don't worry about me, _sire_," Eomer took a long swig, laying into his role as sell-sword and occasional drunk with gusto, "I've been drinking this stuff since the cradle."

"Yet still enough brains left to do what you do," Amrothos grumbled, nursing his own drink.

"What is this place?"

"The _Grey Dove_? This is my kind of place," Amrothos replied, "my eldest brother resides in the towers among men of power. Second eldest drifts somewhere between one wave and the next on the ocean, and my place is here. This is where I belong."

Eomer slid a look across the scarred tables, the unwashed floors, its equally hygiene-averse inhabitants, and raised one eloquent eyebrow.

"Yes, here, among the riffraff and the cast-offs, the flotsam and jetsam," Amrothos said, "But if you had meant your inquiry in a more practical vein, this is a smuggler's paradise. Owned by that lady there, who just tried to proposition you."

Eomer ignored his little joke, "what was Lothiriel's place, then?"

"Riel? Are you joking?" Amrothos smiled a crooked smile so like the one Lothiriel often gave Eomer, "with her love of the sick and wounded, the masses of unwashed? I did tell you that I was her favorite brother, did I not? Her lot was thrown in with mine, of course. And with the surly, the injured, the underdogs."

"She mentioned that," Eomer remembered her saying in that tone of voice when he couldn't be sure if she was joking, _they are my particular constituency, sir, the bad tempered, the cast-offs._

"She especially loved to look that their faces, did she tell you?"

"No," Eomer said, "But I've seen her drawings."

"They're something, aren't they?" Amrothos steepled his fingers, "you see, what ability I have of reading people's faces I learned all from Lothiriel. I'm almost as good as she is at it, now.

"She liked to watch people, and not beautiful people by any means, but your ordinary people milling about in the markets of Dol Amroth with all the years of life in their faces.

"She made me hold expressions for her while she sketched in the beginning. I looked horrible in half of them, and I told her I'd never do that face again but she said, you will, because you can't help it. That's the key, you see. Your face so readily gives your thoughts away; it is the rare man who can guard his expressions so well that a good reader wouldn't be able to sift anything out."

He looked at Eomer, "see, I can tell that you're skeptical, and… there, frankly disbelieving."

"And you're a true reader of men," Eomer rolled his eyes.

"Alright, alright," Amrothos held up his hands, "Let me prove it to you, then. Pick anyone here; I'll tell you what they're thinking. Or at least, what they're feeling."

"You can't prove it to me," Eomer countered. "you'll make up some bollocks story and there will be nothing to prove you right or wrong."

"Tough crowd," Amrothos frowned, "then, let me wager that I will be able to spot the possessors of the sapphire within ten minutes of their walking through the door."

"Really?"

"They're not here yet, I can tell you that."

"I've got an eye on the door, too," Eomer said, "if you call them before I do and you're right, then you win."

They shook on it.

"So if what you're boasting of is true, _sire,_" Eomer said, "Lothiriel can do this, too?"

"You have my condolences," Amrothos shook his head, "Once she knows you a little, she can read your face like a book. She can tell when you're lying. Should have warned you before the wedding.

"It was awful to try to win her at cards, for a start. And with the other lies, as soon as she realized how often everyone lied, she became very quiet. She used to talk my ear off, you know. But when she got good at reading faces, that was when it all changed. Just sat there watching all of us hide our various secrets, not saying a thing.

"Lothiriel says next to nothing to anyone. You probably know this already. She would make a far better spy than I. It's as if in her mind she distills all the unspoken feelings, all the secrets of the world, then bottles them and lines them against a wall somewhere deep inside her heart."

"Why is she a healer, then? Why not a painter, a politician, or anything else?"

A movement at the door caught Eomer's eye.

"What about those two?" he asked Amrothos.

Two broad-shouldered men had ambled in, their coats too heavy for the spring. Their boots thudded on the wooden floor and their voices carried. Each held a large stuffed bag.

"The right one is half-witted," Amrothos replied, "and the one on the left must be a regular. The unholy glint in his eyes is his love for mead, for a fix, and not for a bargain. And he's yellow as the harvest moon. He's mad for the mead. Those two? You should be ashamed of yourself."

Amrothos turned back to his ale.

"And to answer your question, of course she would be a healer. Who else knows secrets that we can't even tell our own family? She liked to listen; and God knows people like to talk about themselves to a pretty healer.

"Riel thought at first she didn't have the brains for it, but anyone who knows her at all knows that's not true. Then she thought she didn't have the stomach for it. Nearly passed out once. She came to Thalion and me pale as death and told us about the flesh eating disease and how a man, fine one day, had both legs sawed off the next to save his life. Nasty business."

The name brought Eomer up short.

"Thalion? Thalion of Argalan?"

"Yes," under his applied tan Eomer saw Amrothos blanch, "did you know him?"

"No," Eomer said, "I didn't. But your father mentioned him to me."

"Why would father tell you about Thalion?" Amrothos was full of bewilderment.

"He told me… " it was the time to ask the question, Eomer thought, however little he might like the answer, "He told me Thalion and Lothiriel had a flirtation."

"Oh," Amrothos frowned, "Was it before – that must have been before you were married."

"yes," Eomer blinked, "it was."

"Oh, Father. He means well, he always does, but he…" Amrothos sighed, and there was pain in his face.

"I need to explain something to you about Thalion."

The dark eyes scanned the room, and settled back on Eomer. Amrothos sighed, as if reluctant to begin. Then he reached into his breast pocket, and took out a piece of paper.

Eomer unfolded the parchment gently; it was tissue-thin along the edges where it had been folded and refolded, again and again.

For a minute he didn't understand what he was looking at. It was hand-drawn picture of two young men. The taller had a shock of curly hair and looked out at the artist with an easy laugh. He had his arm slung arm around the other, who was turned to him, smiling.

Then he realized the shorter of the two was Amrothos, or a younger version of him, more tousled and carefree. He certainly did not have that practiced, polished smile he wore now.

No, in the picture he looked at the taller boy with genuine, unself-conscious awe.

No, not awe.

Eomer blinked.

Love.

"Lothiriel drew that, four, maybe five years ago." Amrothos looked very tired all of a sudden. "She said_, I've never seen you like this, brother_. So she drew us_, to have later_, she said, _when you two are old men fighting over little things, so you can see what you looked like in your youth._"

For a second Eomer didn't understand.

"You mean Thalion of Argalan was…"

"He was mine," Amrothos' voice was quiet, "as I was his. Father would not have understood, at least, I didn't think so at the time. Thalion's family certainly would not have. The Argalans were an old house, proud, conventional. Not exactly open-minded. Especially not when it came to Thalion, their firstborn son, their best-born.

"Lothiriel kept our secret. She went with us where we asked so people would think that it was she Thalion courted, which was a bit of a reach for him, they said, even with his looks and charms and the Argalan coffers behind him. But father bought it: hook, line, sinker. He told me to go along as chaperone for the two of them, if you can believe it. It amused him a little, I think, to see us run ragged by my little sister."

"Your father told me that he fell in the final battle," Eomer said, remembering.

"They never found him, after," Amrothos had fixed his gaze somewhere beyond the lip of his mug, "his family kept his belongings for a time before they began to sort through it. And Thalion … Thalion was less discreet than he should have been in his personal effects, about the two of us. Who we were to each other. But who wouldn't have been? Who plans so far ahead for the possibility of their death as to hide all incriminating mementos? Not Thalion, who thought himself nearly invincible.

"There was a confrontation. A lot of ugliness. Most of that took place shortly after your marriage, I believe. The Argalans accused me of every manner of perversion before all Dol Amroth. Then they accused Lothiriel of aiding and abetting my bad behavior. Father somehow managed to make them stop, on top of getting over his own shock. Part of the reason I work in the shadows now is because of that. There could be no public life left for me in Dol Amroth, after the Argalans got through with my name and my reputation.

"Riel told me that they had written her a letter, filled with nothing but poison," Amrothos said, "I hope that she burned it."

Eomer did not know what to say. He just remembered her crooked smile when he inquired after her family, hoping that she would tell him about the letter.

_Father plans… And Amrothos, Amrothos will always be heartbroken._

"Father was in the dark when he told you that Thalion and Lothiriel had a flirtation," Amrothos ran his hands through his already ragged hair, "They were the best of friends. But he was never her lover."

Amrothos looked up at Eomer.

"You didn't take father's words to heart, did you?"

Eomer hesitated.

"You did," Amrothos breathed, "My God, you did, didn't you? You thought since the beginning that she – and Thalion?"

Amrothos looked like someone had gutted him.

"And she would have said nothing, because she was trying to protect me. Typical Riel. Shutting up when she shouldn't for some stupid reason. Gods, her place was always with you, don't you understand that?"

"Do you really think so?" Eomer said.

"By the Valar, if you had any doubts," Amrothos said, "you should know: she came to me the night after your sister's wedding, when she saw you, and said, _it's happened, Amrothos. It's happened to me too. I don't think you mad any longer._"

"Yes," Eomer said, "I must have made an impression."

"You must have," Amrothos' eyes were intent on Eomer's, "Let me tell you how it was in the beginning. Father had run the idea by Riel early on, of your union," Amrothos said, "she had never even seen you by that point, only heard us sing your praises. And she turned him down flat.

"She said that however politically advantageous it might be, however charming you might be, she was not going to marry a warring man. Father, of course, said that we were all warring men at this point, but she said it was different, since you had war in your heart."

"What do you mean? War in my heart?"

"Eomer," Amrothos leaned across the table, speaking softly, "you're a soldier by profession and inclination. You may be many things, but there's a part of you, and not a small part, that's a killer. You may be one the of most principled men I know, but you are also among the finest killers I have ever met."

It was the first time in Eomer's life that one of his friends had called him _killer_ to his face. It should not have shocked him, but it did.

"When she asked me what kind of a man you were,"Amrothos continued, "I told her that you valued strength above all things. I told her the truth, that if there was anything I knew about you, seeing you before that Black Gate, it was that you were most fully yourself in the hot blood of battle, in the middle of the fray, with your sword in your hand."

"I am a man of war," Eomer said through gritted teeth, "but I do not go to war for war itself. I go to war so that there can be peace."

"I know," Amrothos said, "and you're angry. I am not trying to provoke you; I am trying to tell you something important. Because what you are… who you are is fundamentally different than what Riel is. You fight; she heals. She decided not to kill mosquitoes several summers ago, you know. Said it wasn't their fault.

"And yet – and this is something so storybook, fairy tale, completely out of character for Riel – ever since she _met_ you, all the rules were thrown out. She said it was you and no other. We were all stunned."

"It's almost unbelievable," Eomer said.

"It would have been," Amrothos' bark of laughter was so like Lothiriel's that it hurt, "and I thought that she was joking right until the moment I realized that she wasn't.

"And the strangest thing is that – that night, at Eowyn's wedding; I only remember you belting out the Lay of Helm Hammerhand at the top of your lungs. And dancing with every able-bodied woman in the room under the age of sixty. Oh and not to forget, bathing in our best cask of the Lossarnach red. Your lady sister was quite put out.

"But you must have said something to Lothiriel. Because she never looked back after that."

"Aye, I must have."

They both stared into their drinks for a time, or at the door.

"I'm very sorry for your loss," Eomer said, "for Thalion."

_They were the best of friends, but he was never her lover._

He was Amrothos' lover.

Eomer did not know if he could feel any more of a fool than he did, at that moment.

"Thank you," Amrothos said, "I know you must have your opinions about it, about Thalion and me. I'm fine with that. I just wanted to tell you this because it is important. Because Lothiriel was… she was trying to be a good sister."

_Amrothos will always be heartbroken, _Lothiriel whispered in his ear.

Eomer did not need to have any skill of reading emotions to see the devastation there still, on Amrothos' face.

_And what of me, Lothiriel?_ He asked her, _what was I supposed to feel, when I found out that your heart had been mine, all along? Mine, and no one else's?_

_Be reasonable, Eomer,_ he nearly heard her say, _I didn't expect that you felt anything at all._

She was crueler as a ghost, by far.

"There," Amrothos said suddenly, "a blue-eyed man behind you. His yellow-haired son. They're the ones."

Eomer blinked. With an effort he recalled why they were here.

The matron came by again with two new mugs of ale.

"Listen boys," she muttered, "I'm all for a chat here but if you're not putting in a bid tonight you might want to get out. Things might get a little ugly, and seeing as I like the looks of ye," – with a wink for Eomer – "I don't want to see your pretty face knocked about."

"Not to worry, my lady," Amrothos had re-assumed his debonair charm, "we're here for more than the ale. Swing by after the first round, when people are actually serious."

"Yes sir," She tilted her ample hip at Amrothos in a mock curtsy, and blew Eomer a kiss as she left.

"I told you she likes you," Amrothos said, not looking at Eomer, "What did we wager on me spotting the kidnappers first?"

"I hardly know," Eomer said.

"I need your head in this with me right now," Amrothos said into his goblet.

"It is, _sire_."

Amrothos slid him a sidelong look.

"It is." Eomer said.

"Good," Amrothos said, "because they're accepting the first round of offers. Don't turn around. The older man looks like one of your countrymen, and I don't want to risk him recognizing you."

Amrothos' dark eyes painted over the room in one long swathe, and then returned to a single spot.

"There's our competitor," he said with a smile.

"You know I can't see a damn thing, right?"

"I hate to admit this, but you have a good eye. Remember our lemon-yellow gentleman? He's taken off his coat and shown his true colors."

Amrothos squinted.

"Merchant class, likely from Southeast Gondor, the type that deals half in legitimate trade and the other half with the Haradrim. He's wearing a mantle of rubies, only one of which is real, though the others are rather good fakes. It must be a pretty recent windfall for him to be bidding for the stone."

"Maybe he, like my lady over there," Eomer nodded to their serving-woman, "knows there will be an fight and decided not to wear his best and brightest."

"Well, that changes our plans not at all, save that I will duck a little bit faster when the time comes," Amrothos took a long swig of his ale, and then raised his goblet with a nod of his head and a wink.

"Time to stir the pot."

This time when the matron stopped by with two full pints, Eomer replaced his mug while Amrothos dug into one of his side pockets.

What he took out was the intricate miniature of a black ship, double-masted, that would perhaps take a crew of twenty or thirty. He let it drop lightly atop the lip of the remaining full mug, where it floated on the foam as upon the waves of a dark sea.

"Lady," Amrothos said, "this fine mug of ale is for that gentleman in the corner."

Behind them the buzzing room quieted.

Eomer heard the woman's steps as she made her way to the owner of the stone.

Across from him, Amrothos raised his still three-quarters full mug in a salute.

A fist slammed down on the wooden table.

"Dammit, Coenred, we had an agreement."

Eomer looked now, as everyone in the establishment did, toward the offended party. The ruby-gilt merchant was standing, fist planted on the table, sweating heavily in his furs. In the dark light of the bar he was so yellow that he nearly glowed.

Eomer' followed his eyes around the dim-lit room and counted about half a dozen men looking to him, his men, his protection. Eomer dropped his hand by his sword and felt the slow and steady beat of his own heart, and the adrenaline sliding into his veins.

"I got a better offer," the blue-eyed man called Coenred hissed, "you have money, but this is a way out. Now we've agreed that this was to be an auction, didn't we? Auction means it goes to the highest bidder."

There was something in that man's face, with his bright blue eyes, that was very familiar to Eomer.

"That said," Coenred continued, "we both have our own men to ensure this transaction goes smoothly. And so, if you will take yours and slowly back out of this fine establishment here, I shall be taking the other gentleman up on his – "

Then Coenred froze. For while he looked over to Amrothos, his gaze had caught on Eomer.

He turned white, as if he had seen the shade of an old enemy rise up and meet him.

For a second his words were lost.

A moment was all his opponents needed. For even as Coenred shouted, "It's a trap!" The man who Amrothos called half-witted had reached out and caught the younger blond man who entered with Coenred, and held a knife to his throat.

"Maybe now we can negotiate on new terms," said the merchant.

"Cale," the Coenred said.

"The stone," said the merchant.

"We're both dead, father," said the yellow-haired youth named Cale, calmly.

"We're evenly matched," said Coenred, swallowing, "my men against yours. Give me my boy and you can have the stone. No one has to die."

"I'm afraid," the merchant said, "that I pay your men better than you do."

Amrothos was wrong, Eomer thought. There was no auction here; only a blood bath: eight against a lone man and his son.

Eomer only knew that he needed those two alive, to find out what they had done with Lothiriel.

He pulled his sword and ran.

Coenred was already dead by the time Eomer got to the merchant.

The youth was on the ground. He had twisted away from his captor's knife and therefore only had one side of his neck opened. He lay there, a hand clasped at his throat, blood seeping through his fingers.

"Leave him alone!" Eomer held his blade to the merchant's glistening yellow neck. He was surrounded. He sincerely hoped Amrothos had some neat trick up his sleeve. "He's barely out of childhood, you bastards."

The merchant shifted his neck under Eomer's blade.

"How touching to see compassion from a sell-sword," he said, but his pulse had rocketed to an unhealthy speed. He was sweating more heavily.

He called to one of the dark-haired men, "have you found it?"

"No, sire," They had gone through the dead man's pockets.

The merchant swore, "search the boy!"

Eomer tightened his hold on the man's fat neck. He could almost feel the prick of blades at his back.

"I said," he used his most convincing voice, tightening his hold, "leave the boy alone."

"Fine!" huffed the man, struggling now to breathe, "stop! Stop. Leave him."

Eomer could have sworn the boy on the floor laughed.

""Do you really think they would keep something so valuable on their persons?" a voice came from the back, where Amrothos sat with his legs crossed, watching the spectacle like it was a particularly lively evening at the theater.

"Especially if they knew they were stepping into hostile territory? Personally, I would have hidden it in the saddle bags. Or in a corner of the stables. There are many safer places to hide such a valuable thing, don't you agree?"

"Your men can go search the stables," Eomer hissed.

"You heard him," the merchant said. His legs shook.

Eomer hoped that they wouldn't realize how much more money they stood to make if both Eomer and the merchant were dead. They didn't. Instead they went through the door into the night, one by one.

"I will remember your face, sell-sword," cried the merchant from where Eomer had tossed him onto the ground.

But Eomer was already back inside. Other parties in the auction were slowly filing out of the tavern, giving a wide berth to the man on the ground, and his son.

Eomer clasped his hand over the wound in the boy's neck. He looked no older than sixteen, maybe seventeen, the fine gold of a mustache barely dusted his upper lip. Not old enough to be a man, not old enough to die.

"Told him," the boy croaked, "we were dead."

"You're going to be fine, boy," Eomer lied, a lie he had told so many times before, as he kept pressure on the neck wound. "Amrothos," he shouted, "a healer."

_This is Lothiriel's battlefield, not mine._

He looked over at the older man, lying with his blue eyes open, and then at the blond head of the boy.

His father had called him _Cale_.

Then it came to him.

The blue eyed man had the name of Ceolwulf, then, not Coenred. He had been a friend of Eomund. He was brave, almost recklessly so, and long ago Theoden made him a Marshal of the Mark for his valor and his victories over the orc parties that raided the countryside.

Eomer had been nearly eleven when he first held Ceolwulf's newborn son in his arms.

They called him Cale.

"You don't look like I thought you'd look," the boy coughed, and the blood bubbled around his mouth. He was becoming very pale.

"You're Eomer, aren't you? I thought you were a giant," he said, "she told me you were. But she's as tall as you."

Eomer felt his pulse quicken. There was not much time.

"Where did you take her?"

The boy laughed, wheezing. The laugh sent a chill down Eomer's spine.

"She was pretty. But she's dead, too," he said, "just like me."

"Where did you take her?" Amrothos was shouting.

"Port," coughed the youth, "to the Jurist. Then Cages...Of Harad."

He smiled with bloodstained teeth. Eomer could hear the click in Amrothos' jaw as he clenched it tight. He could feel the pulsing of the artery against his fingers, and despite his efforts the bleeding went on, and on.

"Amrothos, do we have anything – a bandage, a towel?"

Ceolwulf nearly as reckless and bold as Eomund was, he took chances, he went up against huge numbers of orcs with too few men, and he always emerged unscathed. But when his son was born Ceolwulf lost his heart for warring, and asked Theoden to take back his duties. He did not wish to leave his son with nothing of him but his name, he said.

He had stood before Theoden, tall then and golden, renouncing his rank of Marshal. But Theoden could not allow for the exception. _Other men have sons, and still go to war,_ Eomer remembered Theoden saying, as he motioned to Eomund, to Eomer, who stood proud beside his father.

_I thought I was a free man of Rohan, and not a slave of Theoden King, _Ceolwulf spat. And that night Ceolwulf escaped, ran from the Mark and from his rank, and took his son with him.

Eomer remembered it, for when his father and mother were both dead, his younger self would wake in the bitter watches of the night and wish that he had traded places with Cale, that his father had loved him enough not to be killed by orcs, or leave Theodwyn to die of grief. Loved him enough to put aside his thirst for glory, for danger.

Sometimes, in the dark of night, when the tales of his father's valor seemed a poor substitute for a father, Eomer wished that Eomund, too, had taken him away from the Mark, from his death. As Ceolwulf had done for Cale. He had tormented himself with those visions, knowing them to be weak, to be unworthy, yet he relished them, all the same.

He had raged at Theoden, guarded his heart even against his uncle's every kindness, for he could not rage against a father who was dead.

Ceolwulf lay there, open-eyed, surprised by the face of his death.

Kidnapper, Eomer thought, traitor. So the bitterness of life could still change a man, even if it couldn't change his love for his son.

"A healer, Amrothos," Eomer called, "Anything."

"No," the youth said, "my dad's dead, isn't he? He is. I saw it. They killed him. I told him, not too greedy. Would he listen?"

He coughed again and it was then that Eomer saw the anguish in his face.

"Take it," Cale said, producing the sapphire in his hand and all but throwing it at Eomer, "take the cursed thing. It wasn't worth it. How can it be worth it?"

"Cale, I need you to stay calm," Eomer said.

"Damn you, I won't be calm. You can't command me to live, even if you're the bloody king of Rohan. Bossed about enough as it is," Cale closed his eyes, seeming to gather his strength, "At least this, this thing is mine."

And then, with fingers that were much stronger than they looked, he wrenched aside Eomer's hand, where Eomer had been applying pressure to the hole in his neck, and twisted his wound into the floor.

It was just long enough.

And then his hand was lax; and then there was only relief in his face.

* * *

That dark morning when she came to him again in his bed Eomer told her, "When I see you again we are going to talk, Lothiriel."

Her hair was like a night's cool river as it swept over his face, onto his chest. Her eyes were calm and steady.

_Talk? _Fingertips skimmed over his arms. Soft lips, against his ear. _Talk about what?_

"Everything_._ All that you've hidden from me. All your secrets."

_I might be dead. The dead keep their secrets._

"You're not dead."

_No? The boy said so._

"Your life is not your own anymore. You said those vows. You share your fate with me now, just like you should have shared your secrets, and your heart. I would have kept them safe, Lothiriel. They would have been safe with me."

_No, Eomer, it is you who do not understand. __My life and death are my own; they have always, always been. Mine and no other's. __Didn't you see that boy choose his fate, yestereve? His fate was his own, as well._

_We all die alone. I know this now. And your new-found guilt cannot keep me here, any more than my duty to you, not if I were determined to leave._

* * *

"Eomer, I would have you speak plainly with me." His sister frowned at the medallion in her hand. She had never been one to stand for any subterfuge.

He winced at her tone.

"I'm saying, Eowyn, if the council writes asking where I am, that you tell them…anything. Answer their demands, if you like, run the whole bloody country, if you like," he sighed, "just for the next couple of weeks."

Like a queen she folded her arms before her and tilted her head, considering him, evaluating him.

The White Lady of Ithilien, now. All their lives she had been by his side, but now she was here, shouldering her corner of sky so far away from him. His sister, who knew him better than he knew himself.

"The next couple of weeks, I am to… cover for you?"

"You will have all my powers in my temporary absence," Eomer affirmed, "that's what the medallion means."

"Temporary absence?"

"I intend for it to be temporary, yes," he said.

A beat.

"You intend to go in pursuit of Lothiriel, yourself? And leave Rohan to me?"

"Yes."

The miniature Amrothos had floated in the Ceolwulf's drink was of an actual ship, one in his employ. As Eomer spoke with Eowyn, Amrothos was putting a crew together to sail for the havens of Umbar, tonight.

_You know that wager we made, Amrothos? About you spotting the kidnappers?_

_Yes?_

_You won. So you're taking me with you. _

"I could do nothing less for her," Eomer said, "I owe her that much, at the very least."

"Is that really the truth?" his sister said, "for I thought that the two of you had married to complete the alliance of Gondor and Rohan."

"Eowyn –"

"For you never wrote me about her. You would say, letter after letter,_ Lothiriel is well, and sends her regards._ Not another word on your marriage: if you were happy; if you made each other miserable. What was I supposed to think? "

"Eowyn –" the pain was back in his chest.

"So you feel guilty about losing her," she went on, merciless, "but a heart is always fonder from afar. So you lose her, and suddenly you seem to care so very much? Don't pretend now, brother, that she means more to you than she did before. It only muddles the picture. It is untruthful."

"Eowyn, please."

"Eomer - " his sister began.

But she looked into his face then, and saw something, "what is it?"

"I hardly know," he said.

"Eomer," she said, "we have no secrets between us."

"Of course we do," he said, "everyone has secrets, everyone hides things. But I _would _share all of mine with you, if you asked it of me, sister."

"Then tell me," she said, "for I am asking it of you now."

"I can hardly say what it is, Eowyn," he said, "My heart aches. There is guilt there, but it's not just guilt."

There was that unsparing hardness, that brutal strength, in Eowyn still. Her eyes bore into him, but her hand had gentled. She took his fingers lightly in hers and sat down beside him.

"My poor brother. And why should your heart trouble you?"

The first birds of spring hearkened to one another across the still-bare branches of the trees.

"I knew she would be a good queen," he said, "I knew it immediately. She was intelligent, capable, and had a kindness to her. And I thought it most important that the woman I marry be a good queen, above all other things."

"I did find her capable, for she labored untiring at my side, but I did not know just many troubles lay heavy on her mind. For she never told me.

"And I found her to have a gentle heart, for she worked on behalf of those who could not fend for themselves, but I did not know she had given that heart to me. She never told me that, either.

"I did not know how brave she was, and how alone, until now. She took the vows; she was mine. But I never understood her, Eowyn, and she never did explain herself to me. She never opened her mind to me. And I could not love a woman who I thought was not honest with me."

"Eomer," his sister paused, and seemed to measure her words, "Eomer, do you remember how hard you fought uncle at first, when he tried to parent us, all those years ago?"

"I remember," Eomer said.

"You didn't talk to him for months, and when he finally goaded you into speaking, you told him that you still held him responsible for Father's death, for it was he who commanded the hunting party."

"Gods, I did, didn't I? I'd nearly forgotten."

"He was infinitely patient with you," Eowyn remembered, "one stubborn man pitted against another, but eventually he wore you down. I was the one to give him the idea, you know. I told him that he needed to make you feel like you had a place in his home, not just now but also in the future, for all time. And so he handed you a spear on your twelfth name day, on which he had someone engrave the words, _Eomer, who is to be Marshal of the Mark._

"It was after mother followed father to the grave, and you need to know that you belonged somewhere, belonged absolutely, before you let your guard down."

"What are you trying to tell me, sister?" Eomer asked.

Her hand was warm and strong in his.

"You do not give your heart, Eomer. You dispense trust and responsibility, as a commander does. And you chose your wife the same way you would choose a general: for her competence and intelligence, her potential to serve the kingdom. But she is your _wife_, Eomer.

"Do you know, even I could tell that girl loved you? She did not dance with you, that night at Ithilien. She watched you. From the beginning of the night she watched you. I didn't even see it at first; I was too busy celebrating_, _but Faramir did. And he said_, who would have thought, Lothiriel falling for your brother. A lone songbird loving the falcon_.

"So she didn't give you what Theoden had given you, the spear with your name upon it; she never gave you those words proving that she had yielded her heart to you. Anyone with eyes could see she loved you. _But_ you just never did, did you? You bade her climb the steps of the mountain with you, to look out over your vision of Rohan. But you didn't look at her. So, like with uncle you persist with her, stubbornly resisting what she offered you, because deep down you are still afraid that you have no place there, in her heart.

"My dear brother," she said, "my dear brother; you have always had a true heart. I remember how hard you tried to discourage me from riding to war, to take up arms as shieldmaiden; but you never once said to me_, Eowyn, do not do it, for I love you and would not lose you_. I don't know if you even felt it. I don't even know if you knew to explain it to yourself in that way. I don't know if you even dared.

"They told me, later, about what happened on the battlefield, when you thought that I had died. Yet in your grief you still cried out with anger, calling for _Death_. I thought it quite heroic; I was touched. But it sounded just like you. You, who would not say;_ there is pain in my heart that my sister is dead, and I do not think this pain will ever leave me_. You would only say,_ let me kill those who have taken her from me, and let her be avenged_.

"And at my wedding in Ithilien, the whole time I thought: maybe you said nothing at my troth-plighting, but now that you had a year to think on it you will come and tell me you would miss me, that it almost hurt you to see me happy here in my new home, that you wished it had been like before, when it was merely the two of us united against the sorrows of the world. But you never told me.

"Why do you think I switched out your water for horse piss that morning: did you think it was for ruining the shirt I had made you? It wasn't; it was because you are a stubborn ass, because I thought you would yield to me those words and you never did."

"Eowyn," he said, "Eowyn. I did feel all those things; but I didn't want to spoil your night. I didn't want to ruin your celebration. I didn't want to hold you back from everything, from your future life."

"I know," she said, "I know that now. I know you. But that pain your heart, Eomer; maybe your heart is in pain because you have ignored it for so long. So ask yourself, why is tenderness always a battle? Why is it never a little easy? What are you afraid of?"

She shook her head.

"And you know what is truly terrible? That you've really met your match this time. You, who would not let yourself feel, and she, who felt everything and would not speak of it. Don't you see? She would not give you the words because she is uncertain too, as uncertain of you as you are of her."

"That's why I must go find her, don't you see?" Eomer said.

"Yes," she said, "I suppose you must, for both your sakes'."

She stood suddenly, and told him to wait while she fetched something from her chambers.

Eomer sat alone among the garden beds of Ithilien.

He felt dizzy.

He felt as if there was an old bruise on his heart, and only Eowyn had ever managed to put her finger on it, and only Eowyn would push hard enough to remind him that he still had a heart, a heart vulnerable to so many things.

"Here," Eowyn had returned with piece of blue-green silk, "every champion needs his lady's favor."

"What is it?"

"A healer at the Houses brought it over. It's Lothiriel's; she wore it when she worked in the gardens to shield her face from the sun, and I think to cover her hair as a disguise," Eowyn tucked the bolt of silk into his hands, "She has very distinctive hair, the Princess of Dol Amroth."

"Yes," Eomer said, "she does."

For Lothiriel's hair was a raven black that took on the blue sheen of finest steel under the sun. It shone like the wings of the blue-black birds Amrothos used as messengers to his spies. They flew truer than ravens and in whatever weather, Amrothos said, they went where they intended, across vast distances of air.

Eomer loved running his fingers through Lothiriel's hair.

A scent of freesia, rose, and musk came to him; the cloth had taken up her scent.

The pain was back in his chest.

"Eowyn, do you think that is why she is gone ? Because of me? Because I've never learned my lesson?"

"No, that was no fault of yours," she said, " And I cannot stop you from going where you wish to go. Perhaps even now you're thinking of punishing her kidnappers; you imagine sneaking past all the guards of Harad and winning back the prize that was yours from the start.

"But I hope you might see yourself true one day: for you are a gentle-hearted man, roughly treated by all that's happened. For you do feel, and feel deeply - love and fear and anguish and grief. All these feelings you have ignored, put aside, because they disturbed the equilibrium of your world. And she had been one of those things. A queen who muddled the lines you drew for yourself, a puzzle that threw your world out of balance; and not only a queen, but a wife –a wife who loved you, a wife who you might love."

Eowyn stood now, her golden hair lifted by the wind, and said, "I am saying, brother, that it's about damn time you went after Lothiriel. And don't worry about running the country. After all, how hard can it be?"

* * *

Grey sails unfurled behind him, the wind whispered against his ears, and the deck of the ship shifted under his feet. Eomer tightened his hands on the railing of the ship and tried to focus on what Amrothos was saying, instead of the churning in his visera.

"What you heard was important," Amrothos said, releasing a black bird into the air with a message tucked into its leg, "for Erchirion had thought they might try and sell her to slavers and has been patrolling the waterways for slaving vessels, rather than looking for a Jurist."

"I didn't think that the Cages of Harad were real."

Eomer's knuckle had turned white from his death-grip on the bow.

"They weren't, at least, not for a long time," Amrothos eyed Eomer warily, as if gauging how far he should jump if his brother-in-law sudden decided to introduce the contents of his stomach to the wooden deck.

"The Numenoreans wrote about them after they conquered Harad as an example of the abuses that had gone on there. That was Ages ago, back in Imrazor's time. Children in Gondor tell of them to scare one another, even Riel and I did that."

A shout from on high. They had drawn up the anchor and were off.

Eomer took his eyes away from the young boy in the bolt-hole, hovering so precariously high above ground in a swinging vessel.

"What are they, exactly?"

Amrothos stared into the horizon at the sinking sun.

"They're places of public execution," he said, "From what I know they were reserved for the most notorious or high-profile criminals, spies, prisoners of war. Scapegoating at its finest. The cages themselves are all over, but the largest collection rest in the heart of Umbar. The prisoners are sentenced to die in various ways, and anyone can have a front-row view of the execution."

"That is sick," Eomer managed to say.

"You still hang men in the Riddermark for their crimes, do you not?" Amrothos said, "Then you know. A crowd always gathers. It's in our nature, to watch. Some things we simply cannot look away from. But the Haradrim have turned it into a sort of entertainment. They've taken that curiosity and made it an outlet for discontent.

"When times are bad for the people of Harad, as they are now, after losing a war, their eyes and their hate are directed to these prisoners as the source of their woes. This way, they may forget who it was that led them into a losing war in the first place."

"And that's where they've taken Lothiriel?"

"Yes," Amrothos said.

"My God."

"Much as I hate to say it, this is probably the best option that she had," Amrothos said, "I've seen what it is slavers do to their slaves, the women especially and… well. This way there will be a Jurist."

"A Jurist?"

"It's what they call the men who bring the prisoners in, and give them their sentence. They're highly intelligent and well-organized, trained to their task. Most of them believe in their mission almost religiously."

"Believe in what?"

"That what they do is justice, and not a glorified form of kidnapping and murder. It is actually a high honor in Harad, for the younger sons of a family to be trained as Jurists. They are methodical and deadly, but they will protect their prisoner up to the moment they get them into a cage. So it is very likely that Lothiriel made it into Umbar unharmed."

"And after she makes it into Umbar?"

Amrothos' face was pale.

"The sentence is death; being who she is, the sentence is death. But because she is Queen of the Riddermark, they will want to draw out her life for all the days that they have of it, to satisfy as many onlookers as may desire to look on her."

"It gives us time, then?"

"We have some time," Amrothos agreed, "but we will have to hurry."

Eomer stepped into the evening air upon the running river, and the ghost of Lothiriel was with him in the wind, the faint scent of rose and freesia and musk.

_Hold tight, Lothiriel. Hold tight._

* * *

The next morning Eomer woke in a ship's cabin to the sounds of the sea, and found her there. She was not in his bed. She was sitting huddled in a corner of the room, her head pillowed in her arms.

"Lothiriel," he said.

She did not move.

"Lothiriel," he said again.

Suddenly it seemed like the time to try the words out, to sound the strangeness of those syllables against his lips, to say: "Lothiriel, I am starting to realize that whatever I wanted in a queen, and whoever I wanted for a wife, you were it."

But she did not come to him. She did not even seem to hear him.

"Lothiriel," he said, pressing on, continuing now that he had started, lest his courage fail him, "This ache in my chest, Lothiriel, it's not guilt. It's something else.

"I think that... I feel that - Gods -I just can't say it right, Lothiriel. I love you."

But then he saw: her dress was white but stained with blood along the hem and the neck. She was weeping, quietly, biting on her lip so that she would make no sound.

He saw her, alone and in despair in a cage of white marble, in the lands of her enemies, far from home. And she did not see him; could not see him.

Could not hear those words upon his lips.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: This was a tough chapter to write. I can't put up a warning without giving it away... I may have to duck and run when you reach the end of it. Just remember:** A happy ending to follow**.

* * *

**Chapter VI**

_Winter will end, spring will return._

_The small pestering breezes_

_that I so loved, the idiot yellow flowers –_

_Spring will return, a dream_

_based on a falsehood:_

_that the dead return._

_- "Averno," Louise Gluck_

**_Lothiriel_**

When Lothiriel finally made it home, they threw her a grand party. The grandest that had ever been seen in Gondor or Rohan. Everyone was invited, everyone she knew and so many more she didn't know, all celebrating her return. And the city was alive with a million tiny lights, as if the stone were lit from within.

Summer had finally come.

She danced with Eomer in a shining room. He took her hand and kissed it before the assembled crowd. He announced to all that he would have no queen but her. He leaned in close to her ear and whispered that he loved her.

And Thalion came. He stood close to Amrothos and they were so happy, like back in those days of their youth, talking nearly without cease, grinning all the while, holding hands. One golden and one dark-haired, they stood tall and proud before all Gondor and Rohan, for they no longer needed to hide.

Her mother was there too, holding onto her father's arm, and the two of them smiled and spoke graciously with Eomer's father, Eomund, who was tawny and fierce. They said to him, your son is a very impressive young king and they're so very much in love.

Then Lothiriel turned in Eomer's arms, confused and frightened, and he said to her _Lothiriel, aren't you happy? Isn't death a wonderful place? All your dreams come true_.

* * *

_What kind of an afterlife does a woman of Rohan, or of Dol Amroth, expect?_

_I don't expect one, Jurist._

_Surely you want to see your loved ones, after you are dead. A place beyond sorrow, where all are reunited._

_The world I know does not dispense things according to what I wish. I would find it rather frightening, to have everything I want._

_That is a singular view, lady. It is no longer the rules of this world, when you are dead. Perhaps in the new place where we go, all that you wish for are granted._

_My brother Erchirion tells me that he won't die; that instead of dying he will come back as porpoise leaping in the great ocean, or perhaps a blue whale sailing in the deep. He thinks that would be the best afterlife. Not merely sailing the waters of the sea, but to _be_ the sea, to be the green waving grass, to be the dust trailing after a star. But that thought doesn't reassure me as it does him. When I hear him say it, I only think there will be nothing of me then, only the dumb grass, the mute stars, and the serene clouds. There is nothing of me, in that._

_So what do you believe?_

_I think that there might be two places, two kinds of after-death. A first where the sun pours down like cool water and all the truths come to the fore, bright-edged and beautiful and you see each other clear. And the second, a darker cavern under the earth, full of warmth and forgetfulness, where one sleeps by another creature through all the days of a long winter._

_And what of your husband? What is it that he believes?_

_Eomer thinks – Eomer knows that when he dies he will go to a great feasting hall in the sky where the mead never stops its flow and the heroic tales of his life and the lives of all his ancestors before him are told. A hall where none ever weary of feasting; where they live in adulation and glory forever. And I don't think I belong there. Perhaps even in the afterlife we will go to different worlds; he to his golden hall in the sky, and I to my darkness within the earth._

_And you do not think it a tragedy, to be parted from him?_

_But that is how the world is, Jurist. We touch hands in this life, and then we go on, we go on._

* * *

Lothiriel had done the calculations. The longest time that she had heard of anyone surviving without food – pure heresay, something she picked up during the course of her studies, a nugget lodged her brain – was somewhere between sixty and seventy days.

But he was a man, in a cell within a prison, not half-exposed to the elements, as she was. He didn't sweat, as she did. It was not only the food, or the lack thereof, Lothiriel thought, it was sweating. Salt lost in her sweat cannot be replenished by drinking pure water.

If it happened slowly enough, she should be relatively comfortable. But it happened too quickly… Lothiriel had never seen this, but she learned that one's brain could swell up, then. One could be cast into fits, and be paralyzed, before dying.

All for want of a spoonful of salt.

She thought: if she did not move each day but to stretch, if she kept out of the sun and did not sweat too quickly, if she could keep the tears at bay, if, if…

She gave herself thirty days. If she exceeded it, then, well, that was a success, the best case scenario.

And then she thought, no, the best case scenario wasn't to exceed 30 days, it was rescue. But she had told them not to follow her. It was not worth her rescue, if rescue meant war.

The first two weeks were especially bad. She was hungry all of the time. It was almost an impossible feeling to describe; to wake with hunger, to know that it will never be assuaged.

The ghosts did not return, only the clear water came, day after day after day. Lothiriel thought she might dream of her friends, of her family, of her husband, but mostly she dreamed of food.

They used to have such feasts in Dol Amroth; the best that the palace cooks could make, and she sampled it all. But Lothiriel did not dream of the fine garnished fish, the oysters cooked open in their own juices, the plump thighs of duck and pheasant, the wine that then flowed, and the delicate elaborate desserts, the cakes.

No, strangely enough she dreamed of the hot, wheaten biscuits she first tasted in the Meduseld.

Dol Amrothian cooks would never stoop to such a common food for their Princes and Princesses. They had cakes aplenty there, fine scones, bread made of twenty different types of grain.

But Lothiriel did not dream of them.

Leofwen, one of the bakers and cooks in the Meduseld, who did not go by her own name but wanted only to be called Cook, would wake early in the morning and fire up the ovens. When she realized Lothiriel kept the hours of a baker not by choice but because she couldn't sleep, she would start a batch of biscuits early enough in the morning that the Queen and those others in the Meduseld who found themselves pacing the dark halls would have some refreshment.

They came out of the oven, steaming. The top was golden and flaky, and peeling the two halves of that biscuit apart, the hot air would rise from the soft center, each layer barely the thickness of a hair and stacked atop one another as if gravity were a rule others had to follow.

And the smell, the room would smell of the heat of the wooden fire in the oven, smell of butter and salt and under it still that lingering tang of yeast and dough. That was the smell of home; everything about home was distilled in that split second when the biscuit was retrieved from the oven and opened, and the steam uncurled like a dream into the air.

She could almost taste it sometimes, in her hunger, that airy softness of the dough, the light sprinkle of salt, the generous slather of butter.

And that first bite; nothing else could be as good as the first bite of Cook's biscuits on a dark morning, when the snows were upon the hills and Eomer was still in the land of his dreams, warm and yielding in the thick furs of their great bed.

She would take her first bite in the kitchen and then, biscuit on plate, steal through the unlit halls of the Meduseld and go back into her rooms. She would light the little light by her desk, and give herself the luxury of drawing a picture in the morning, in that time when all was quiet, and there was no other demand on her time and her attention but the desires of her own heart.

There was that morning when, coming around the corner to the back entry of the kitchen, her feet bare, her hair in a state and a large robe around her shoulders, Lothiriel had found Grimund holding one steaming biscuit in each hand, his mouth working away mid-chew, his normally restrained hair uncombed and wild around his shoulders.

Lothiriel had been horribly intimidated by Grimund the first, second, third, and maybe even tenth time she had met him. But that morning he looked like a grizzled wild-man who had snared a pair of rabbits for his evening meal and didn't even wait for the spit over the fire before he set to.

And Lothiriel doubted she looked any more dignified than he.

For one second she thought she was the only one laughing, but no, there was the tug at the corner of his mouth. Then there was that strange, wheezing sound coming from him, as if he couldn't properly draw air through his throat. It was Grimund, laughing.

For a good half minute the quiet of the hall was only interrupted by that strange wheezing laugh of its most dour visitor, and by the low giggle of its foreign Queen.

They must have recovered eventually that morning, Grimund taking his prize out into the open air with him, and Lothiriel retreating back to the sanctuary of her desk, and her great red leather chair. But whenever she recalled the occasion thereafter she always felt the strangest desire to laugh again, though she couldn't have said why, or what was funny. Yet it was a definite victory, a most unexpected source of comfort in the dark of morning.

It was impossible not to be friends after that. Speaking of everything and nothing over their morning meal. And Lothiriel was in need of friends.

* * *

_Jurist?_

_Yes, lady?_

_What is it that happens to our bodies, when it is over?_

_Why do you ask? _

_I will be dead, but I still care. And please, please, don't parcel me out. I can't stand the thought of it. A tooth of the Rohan queen shown to a child as he grows up; a fingernail, a lock of hair tied in a blue ribbon, a scrap of the dress, a blood-soaked handkerchief saved as memory of the day you triumphed over me._

_No, no, we do not do that, here. We take the bodies far into the harbor, and give them to the sea._

_I don't want anything to be left of me. I don't want a single scrap of me to stay here, I want nothing saved of me._

_Nothing will be left of you, in this place._

_Do you promise?_

_I promise._

_Thank you, thank you_.

* * *

**_Grimund_**

Grimund watched through the crowd as his Queen gave audience to the peoples of Harad. He had followed the masses when they went into the white marbled square this morning, letting them flow around him, letting their essence permeate the air until his own was obscured.

He watched as Lothiriel sat in the shadows of her cage while the white-garbed man – he caught the strange word _Jurist _in the crowd – stood beside her, translating what it was that some of her supplicants said to her, and turning away others.

He saw her drink water. He watched her move slowly, as if moving hurt her. He saw the shadows under her cheeks.

He knew her punishment.

The Jurist looked almost like a Gondorian, tall with that proud nose. Grimund knew he was not a man to be taken lightly. He was strong; he expected trouble. His eyes never stopped moving in the crowd. The sword buckled at his side was not a ceremonial ornament.

Grimund let his natural frown settle over his face. He let the fall of his dark hair cast a shadow over his features. Not that he needed it. Grimund's face was brown enough from the sun. His eyes were not blue, and his was always the one dark head in a sea of gold and brown, back in the Meduseld.

Haradic was not so difficult to speak again when his tongue remembered the twist of words. When Haradic was a language he had spoken with milk-teeth in, with a mother who was equally dark of hair and bronze of skin.

Grimund, the adopted son of Godife had always been a rider of Rohan. He was raised by riders of Rohan, but he was not born of one. He looked more like a Southron than the Jurist ever did, because his blood was of the Corsair, the Haradrim.

This was the land of his mother. A strange place and yet familiar. Something in the smell of the air, perhaps, though his mother ran early from this place, ran while he was still within the womb. But maybe it was in that womb, in that floating darkness that he had first breathed and tasted the salty red-earth air of Umbar.

Grimund counted the guards in the square. The moving eyes of the Jurist swept over him and went past. The breeze of morning was cold against the back of Grimund's neck.

Four others of the Mark had come with him. Good men, trustworthy men, but not spies. They were warriors; blond, with blue-green eyes. They would stand out among the Haradrim even before they opened their mouths. They had taken their mounts across the country, through the rapids and then upon a ship. But four were not enough, if they intended to break Lothiriel out, and return her home safely.

He looked at the Jurist. With that curved blue-gleaming blade of his, that steady look in his eyes, that conviction deep in his heart, he could take on Grimund and the rest of his men. Not with ease, but he could take them on. And Grimund was not getting any younger.

Once they arrived, the other four had set up camp in the forested low mountains surrounding the city, while Grimund rented a small room with a view of the Cages. Those did not come cheap; it seemed to be a perennial favorite of the visiting local merchants to have a private view of those prisoners in the square. So he couldn't afford anything close, but his eyes were good. He could see very far.

And from a rented room atop the house of a family of six Grimund watched the square since yesterday afternoon, and for most of last night.

He saw how Lothiriel had fumbled in the dark with the pitcher of water. How she seemed to reach out blindly at the bars of her cage, even though the moon shone bright on the earth. He did not know how long she had been in the cage, but the night-blindness had come. He didn't have much time.

Around him people milled. Some were opulently dressed, others in rags. Some had traveled from afar specifically to see the Queen of the Riddermark displayed like some exotic bird, with her strange plumage with her blue-black hair, her slanted grey eyes, her elven looks.

He saw one small boy approach her, holding out his hand as if demanding a sweet. The Jurist said something to Lothiriel, who tilted her head the way she always did when taken aback. They spoke for a moment, before Lothiriel reached into her inky hair and pulled free a few strands from her long locks, and passed them through her bars to the boy. He clutched them in his hand and disappeared back into the crowd.

He saw the way that she held herself then, that subtle widening of her eyes, and knew that she was afraid. it was not simply a young boy's admiration of a pretty woman. He knew what she thought: that this was no audience. This was an execution, and they all wanted a piece of her. Afterwards she seemed to sit more fully in the shadow of her cage.

The hour was up, and the Jurist gave a peremptory wave to the crowd. The audience was over for the morning. The Jurist turned up his face and looked upon the guard towers; his gaze ran along the rounded wall and then seemed to pause meaningfully with certain faces in the crowd.

It was the moment that Grimund waited for all morning. Guards in the towers, obviously; probably archers standing by the galleys, and now, within the circle where the cages were kept, men who worked for the Jurist.

The stone wall that surrounded him seemed very high, all of a sudden.

To rescue a prisoner of the cages was like walking into a steel trap. To rescue a prisoner with all of five men, even if they were good men, was suicide.

_Have I yet failed thee, Eomer? _Perhaps there was always a first time.

Grimund tried but failed to unclench his hands. The bright sun of Harad seemed to scatter all his meager plans to the wind. But he would be damned if he came all this way only to say goodbye to his Queen while she sat there, exhibited to all Harad in her slow death.

He tried to think.

He thought, _we need help._

The people about him were starting to retreat from the square, the morning's entertainment over. Grimund started moving too, shuffling his feet in a walk of an older man with arthritic knees.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a man running to the Jurist, whispering urgently in his ear. Grimund saw the Jurist grow still, and nod. He inclined his head at Lothiriel, as a courtier would to his queen. He followed after the man who came with the message at a leisurely pace, confident of his destination, confident of his plans.

Grimund waited a few seconds before weaving through the crowd behind those white robes. He thought that perhaps something had happened with one of the men in the Jurist's employ. Perhaps he could take stock of their numbers, then, and their position. Perhaps walking would clear his head and force some new ideas into it.

He nearly lost them through the maze of stone, but shouts set Grimund straight again. He elbowed through the crowd saw a man kneeling on the ground with two holding his arms back.

The Jurist faced them.

"We caught him behind the Citadel of Justice, sire," said one of the men, "he was looking around."

The man on the ground, Grimund saw, was clearly a half-wit. His mouth opened, but only halting nonsense came out. His eyes went from one unfamiliar face to another and then went skyward and down without any signs of recognition.

"So you did," said the Jurist.

"The punishment is death for those who profane the sacred places," the other man said, eyeing his superior. His hair was braided with red and there was gleam in his eyes.

"Tell me your name," the Jurist said to the man on the ground.

The half-wit frowned, his mouth opened and closed.

"Your name," the Jurist said again, pointing a finger.

But to no avail.

"The punishment is death," insisted the man with red in his hair, "it is written in the Book. It is the Law."

Grimund wondered if they would really kill a half-wit for wandering.

The Jurist said nothing.

The guard with red braids, frustrated by the Jurist's indecision, aimed a kick that sent the half-wit scrambling into the dirt, his once-white shirt billowing up over his back.

And then Grimund saw it, the small shape of a bird and seven stars above, tattooed on a browned shoulder blade.

He hadn't seen it since the great battle. He hadn't seen it since he fought with Imrahil's men before the gates of the Morannon. Now he remembered; instead of the tree of the kings they wore the Swan of Dol Amroth.

The man did not lose a second; he came to his knees and the tattoo was lost below the edge of his shirt again.

Grimund had never been a hugging sort of man, but at that moment he burst from the crowd and leapt upon the man who was no half-wit with all the feigned emotion of one finding a long-lost relative.

"Brother," he cried, in Haradic.

The man tensed for a fraction of a second, but then a wide grin as of recognition split his face and he began to laugh, clutching Grimund's arms as if he had found kin.

"Please, Jurist, sire," Grimund was glad that his feigned joy concealed some of his accent that came of long disuse, "he always liked to wander; he is not right in the head. He did not know the Law."

The Jurist narrowed his eyes.

"Your name," he said. His patience was wearing thin.

And Grimund gave him the name that he was given by his mother, the name she had called him when he was young and they were alone, before she died.

"Gafarat, sire," he said, "and my brother is Hidar. He took to fever when he was young and he has never been right since. Please, he did not know the Law."

Grimund felt the force of the Jurist's gaze and made himself hold under it. Both their lives depended on this; Lothiriel's life depended on this.

"Then you will teach him the law," the Jurist said.

"I will."

"The next time he is caught, it will be death," the Jurist said.

"You are merciful, sire."

"I am not merciful," said the Jurist, "merely just."

"Sire –" protested the younger man beside them.

"It is done, Dalamyr. I will have no more from you."

The youth threw them a disgusted look, but followed after the fluttering white robes of the Jurist, who was already in retreat. The crowd that had gathered was slowly dispersing as Grimund helped the other man to his feet.

In silent accord they walked away from the center of the city, away from the white marble courtyard where Lothiriel was. They did not speak until they had moved into the crowds again, within the market that bloomed along the quay by the ships.

"You bear the swan of Dol Amroth." Grimund said. It was ironic that his Haradic should be so good when he still spoke Westron with a heavy accent.

"You do not look like a Rider of Rohan," the man grinned. He had straightened from his tentative gait, and the intelligence in his eyes was formidable, as if a cover had been removed and the light finally shone free.

"I am Grimund, and Eomer is my king."

"I am Aerandir," the man said, "come, and let us speak more freely when we are upon the ship of Erchirion, who is the son of Prince Imrahil."

* * *

**_Eomer_**

Eomer paced the deck of the ship. The sea still made him a little nauseous, but they passed the mouth of the Anduin last night and he had gained his sea legs, and could walk about deck. Whether he kept his food was still a matter of chance.

He waited impatiently while Amrothos, hunched over a small table on the open deck, ciphered out the words of Erchirion's letter.

All aboard had kept an eye out for birds in the sky. Erchirion would send the same types of homing birds that Amrothos did, the blue-black bird that was loved by the sailors of Dol Amroth, birds that could carry word of their return from sea days ahead of arrival. The birds were trained to home to a special tone on a whistle as well as the port of Dol Amroth, and just that morning one of the lads atop the bolt-hole had hailed a bird that had been crossing the skies.

Amrothos now frowned over the letter that Erchirion sent, destined either for him or for Dol Amroth.

Glancing over, Eomer saw to his frustration the brothers wrote to each other in an encrypted form of Quenya, with the result that he could not read the translated version.

"Amrothos, what does it say?"

"Patience," replied the least patient of all Imrahil's children, "the cipher rearranges the order of words as well as the lettering. I won't know what Erchirion says until I have the whole of it on the page."

Eomer tried to suppress his irritation. He stalked down the length of the ship and back, his booted step thudding on the wooden boards.

A quiet chirp of the messenger bird stopped him before its cage. A small thing, Eomer thought, nothing too impressive, its wings seemingly jet black until the full force of sun caught it, as it did now, and it shone richly of blue and green.

"We call them Eärrámë, milord," said one of the sailors, spotting Eomer's interest.

"Eärrámë," Eomer tested the word on his lips.

"Aye," the man smiled, "the Wings of the Sea. They home toward nest and mate; both males and females are used to carry messages. But the females are hardier; across great distances such as these, from Umbar to Dol Amroth, only the females can carry the message."

"Why is this so? Are the females larger than the males?"

"Nay, milord," the man put a finger between the bars of the cage and trailed it gently over one blue-black wing, "it is actually very hard to tell them apart. Only the master of the aviaries can spot a female from her counterpart, they are so alike in their looks, their size."

"So what is it that makes them hardier?"

"I do not know, milord," he said, "I suppose they have a stronger desire to return to their nests. It is not unknown for their hearts to give out at the moment of reaching home, for they had pushed their bodies so beyond the limits of what it could do. That determination, that spark, was what kept all together, just for long enough."

Eomer slowly put a finger inside the bars of the cage.

"They are easily frightened," the man said, "they do not like strangers very much, especially men. She may not take to you, it is a natural thing."

The trembling bird turned a large, liquid black eye on Eomer and seemed to regard him, and his finger with a cocked head.

Eomer held perfectly still. He saw the fluttering chest of the bird that knew that it was afraid. He saw the perfect stillness with which the bird held itself.

It seemed on the verge of bolting.

It was a stillness that he perceived, not infrequently, in Lothiriel. And suddenly it seemed important that the bird come to him, now, at this time, when all was so uncertain.

Eomer did not move a single muscle.

The bird twitched, and then inched a foot closer to him, and then another step. Then to his astonishment she tucked her shiny black head under his finger several times, almost as if she were allowing herself to be groomed. Her sharp beak nipped almost playfully on his skin. Eomer curled his finger and felt the soft downy feathers on her throat, the pent-up strength in that one wing.

Next to him, the sailor laughed.

"Wonders never cease, milord."

Eomer laughed too, then, a little shakily.

He heard himself hailed from the other side of the ship, and slowly drew his fingers out of the cage and turned to leave.

The Eärrámë cooed at him.

"Milord," said the sailor, holding out Lothiriel's scarf in his hands, "you dropped this."

Eomer took the scarf with profuse thanks to the man, whose name was Gelion, and turned to where Amrothos waited for him, shaking a piece of paper in the air.

The fabric of Lothiriel's scarf ran between his fingers, soft and silky, almost like the feathers of the bird. The sun shone full on it, and the cloth now took on a silver sheen, nearly dazzling him.

It did not glow like this on the morning when Eowyn had brought it to him, in the overcast light of Ithilien.

Eomer frowned. He had seen this before, this strange dazzling sheen. Some memory tugged at him, worried at the corners of his mind.

Amrothos had come to him. Amrothos was explaining something to him.

Grimund had made contact with Erchirion's men, he heard.

_Where have I seen this scarf before? _

Eomer felt as if he was being pulled down by quicksand, something was drawing him down to the depths of a memory.

Lothiriel was alive; they had enough men between them that if they created a distraction in the harbor, they would draw the guards away from the Cages and get her out, Amrothos was saying.

Yet the feeling of something else, something terribly important was pulling at Eomer, dragging at him like chains upon his feet. The gleam of the silk in his hand seemed to stab into his eyes, nearly sharp enough to bring him to tears.

And then it was there. Eomer remembered.

The day of Eowyn's wedding, again. He had ridden into Minas Tirith early in the morning, and rode up to the upper tiers of the city to greet Aragorn.

Then for no reason that he could understand he had descended the white marble streets, but only to the next level, to the Houses of Healing. He walked again there, stepped between those white columns throwing their blue shadows, looking at the Pelennor below him, remembering his sister's long sleep, remembering his own despair.

And in that place in the high mountain air, he felt the weight of the shadow for the first time, the shadow that the war had cast, the shadow that dogged him still, that hasn't left him since the day he was last here, among these marble columns.

Memories had come back to him often during the year; the great lumbering beasts that could crush a man's spine with a mere motion of their head. The smell of blood and dust stirred by the horses. The black beast falling upon his uncle. His sister, lying among the blood-glazed spears of the Pelennor. His friends. Men who knew him since childhood, men in their prime, others past it and yet others still in their youth. All dead. All gone.

The memories came often to him, in the night, in the dark, but he was always able to keep them at bay. He could always close the iron chains upon them, and sink them to the bottom of his mind.

But there was something different on that day. Memories seemed to have taken a lightness of their own, amid the greenery, in the quietness of the Houses.

Theodred, his fair cousin. Theodred, who was to be king. But now, what was left?

Eomer was all that was left. Theoden was dead. Theodred was dead. So many dead, and Eowyn was to go far from him.

In the extremity of his youth, Eomer had once fallen from a roof and broken three ribs and bruised his lung. He had lain all of the evening awake, every breath giving him nothing but pain, his whole chest on fire and wondering how it could be that he could die like this, with such horrible pain with no relief.

The pain that flared in his heart that morning in the Houses of Healing seemed to run along entirely different nerves; it clawed a spiral path from his heart up to his throat and then seemed to clench like a fist.

For a moment the feeling stunned him, and there was a tingling in his head, as if someone had struck him hard across his temples.

It was the first time that tears overtook him in a very long while. He didn't even remember weeping at his father's funeral. He would not have allowed the tears, but like sleep after long days of waking the flood rose out of him and engulfed him, it took him in its grip and did not let go.

The pain twisted like a vise in his chest, in his stomach; he did not know if he wept because of the pain, or whether it was the weeping that so hurt him.

At least he was alone, Eomer thought, blinded by his weeping. He reached out and felt for a stone bench beside him and sank into it like a man hamstrung.

He could only hear the rough gasping, as that of a man who had taken an arrow through the great vessels of the lung, whose every breath only took him closer to death, and knew that it was his own.

At least he was alone, he thought again, unable to restrain those sounds that were coming from his throat.

His fingertips were going numb; he was breathing far too fast. He felt dizzy. The world spun, and he braced a hand on the warm stone of the bench. He didn't know why he wept.

A soft cloth bag was thrust into his hands, and Eomer held it to his nose and tried to breathe slowly into it. He barely noted the hint of mint and basil, the slight wet smell of dirt until very much later, after his head had calmed. He did not know how long that took.

Whoever had said tears relieved pain was lying, he thought, thrusting the bag aside now and burying his face in his hands, willing himself to stop, willing this unmanly display to cease.

A soft, cool hand laid gently on the side of his cheek. Gentle fingers wiped dry his tears. Eomer choked on the bile rising in his throat. He thought that maybe if he pressed his hands tightly enough against his eyes, the weeping, the awful weeping would stop. But it didn't.

_Rider of Rohan_, a woman said, _your day of grieving will come to an end, but only after you have grieved._

Eomer took a deep breath. The choking noises stopped; he no longer sounded like he was strangling. For that he was grateful.

The pain seemed to be slowly squeezing itself out of his chest, into his throat, and into some point between his eyes, where it glowed hot and painful.

For a moment he remembered how taken aback he was, hearing that Theoden wept at the mound where they buried Theodred. Theoden, who never wept, even in his infirmity. Eomer's own eyes were dry when they buried his uncle; dry, as they had always been.

For who had ever been there to say to him, this was the time for weeping?

But now – now.

_Rider of Rohan, _she said, _it is not a shameful thing, or a weakness, to weep for what was lost._

A soft hand brushed his hair as Eomer bent his head into his hands and finally, _finally_ gave in to what was emerging from him.

He cared not how unmanly, how weak, how useless he thought it was. It was there, and he let it free.

And all that time, the soft touch of fingers in his hair. Something no one had done since Theodwyn, so many years ago, even before her death. For Eomer had long ago learned how not to weep.

_Rider of Rohan. I see your future clear,_ she said quietly a long time later, almost to herself, and not to him. _I see only a blessed life for you, and joy your fate._

Then suddenly he felt the pain in his heart leave him. He looked up at the woman, standing over him. The sun was behind her; the sun blazed behind her head and he could not make out her face.

He was blinded by the light.

_Who are you, to know my fate?_ He asked. _Has the gift of the elven kings passed now to the healers of Gondor?_

_I can see it in your face, Rider of Rohan_, she said_. I can read it in your eyes. Your sorrows pass, like rain over the mountains. And joy will come._

His eyes were dazzled. The light that shone behind her made them water and finally he had to turn away, only to look back and see spots dancing blue and black where her visage was. Still in shadow, still obscured.

_Tell me your name, healer_, he said, catching hold of the hand that had now drifted to his still-wet cheek.

She laughed, a low laugh.

And she leaned in close, leaned down to his ear with the sunlight pouring down over them like a dazzling river. The soft scarf covering her hair fluttered perilously close to Eomer's lips, shimmering silver and brightly hued in the light.

She smelled of herbs and sun and something else he couldn't identify. She said nothing; only pressed her lips to the side of his temple, in benediction.

After the war Eomer had gotten used to receiving embraces from strangers. Old wives and their young daughters would plant their lips on his cheek sometimes when he was least expecting it. Young mothers would raise their babes to him for a kiss, some still with that sweet smell of infancy clinging to them. Eomer remembered that, and the wet slobber dribbling on his shoulders as he put his lips to the soft downy head.

But there was something about that kiss, though he could barely feel the warmth of her lips on his skin, something about that kiss that raised the hairs on his neck, as if recognizing the presence of something hitherto unknown, hitherto only imagined. Or something he had never imagined at all.

She laughed again and it was a soft breath on his cheek, and then her hand slipped out of his.

She turned a corner in the greenery and was gone. The light caught a final time on the scarf upon her head.

It was Lothiriel, he thought. It was Lothiriel that morning with her back to the blinding sun. She had been there when his heart had been all but bursting within him. It had been her, drying his tears with her cool fingers.

And she said not a single thing, all this time, Eomer thought, she said not one damned thing to him, when she must have known who he was, all this while.

And all the while, he wondered what he said to her the evening of Eowyn's wedding that made her love him, wondering how much of an ass he was not to remember something so obviously important, so devastatingly important.

But no. It was this, this strange mysteriously bright thing, this moment of grace in the dark roil of all his memories, this was the moment when Eomer first met Lothiriel.

"Eomer, Eomer," called Amrothos to him, "have you heard a single word that I've been saying to you?"

"No," Eomer said, his hand that held the scarf was shaking, "No, Amrothos. I had not even the slightest idea."

* * *

**_Lothiriel_**

_I will have to look at your hand wound again._

_Why does it matter if you put a bandage on it now?_

_The cut is deep. It heals strangely; the hand has a throbbing quality to it, but it is cool. You must take care with this._

_Jurist, are we friends?_

_No, Lady. I am your Jurist, not your friend._

_Who are your friends, then, if not those you bring into the cages? Who are your family?_

_I have no friends. I have no family._

_You were born of a woman; you must have a family. You must have roots, memories, ghosts of your past who haunt you._

_I have renounced my family and friends. To become a Jurist one is to be the eyes and the ears and the arm of the law._

_I tasted salt in my water this morning, Jurist. I just wanted to say thank you._

* * *

People would come up to her and talk to her sometimes, some of them spoke only a little, others gave her a long speech, but Lothiriel couldn't understand what they were saying. She asked the Jurist if he might translate for her, and to her surprise, he did so for about an hour each morning.

But it was only the words she couldn't understand. Their faces were easy enough to read. Their faces were still the faces of men and women, showing the same emotions that men and women feel. Lothiriel expected to see hatred there, or malice; but she saw very little of either.

Most of what she saw was a quiet, determined anger. Most of what she saw, and it was a look that she could not articulate to herself for many days, was – she realized – a deep thirst for vengeance.

If she could draw them; if they had let her have paper and pen – _I cannot; you will eat the paper, _the Jurist had said – she would capture the strong set of the mouth, the slight bend of the head, that tightness around the brows that sharpened the gaze.

Hatred and malice were easier to take, she thought, than vengeance. The madness she had seen that first day, when she walked through the city was almost easier.

It was easier to see darkness over the features of those who wanted her dead, than to see this; this determination, this resolve, this _hope_ that was engendered in them by the sight of her dying, a hope that one day they may see all their wrongs avenged.

Lothiriel had seen that hope in Amrothos' eyes after Thalion died; that hope there with his grief.

_Let me live alone then, Riel,_ he had said, _but not in vain. _That was also the hope in her father, when mother had gone.

In anyone else she should have called it strength, but these were her enemies.

The strength that came of rising against a stronger foe; she knew it all too well. The fight, the resistance, was perhaps one of the strongest drives in her own heart. All those times when she had to conquer her own weakness to be counted amongst the healers, all those times she spoke before Eomer's assembled council, all those little notes and looks she had endured from nameless opponents of her reign, she had thought, I will rise against this. I will fight this, I must. And she did.

But here it was, here it was in the eyes of those who came to see her die.

And in their faces, she saw them saying to themselves, _I will rise against this, against her._

That was why the wars will never end, Lothiriel thought. Not only because of the darkness in us. It was because we thirst for a righteous anger, because we long to be sharpened against a stronger enemy until we became as strong as the sword of angels.

We longed for the heights we might achieve, then. For the foes we might then vanquish, without regard that the foe had family, had dreams, had hopes of a better life.

That night she woke in her cell, and knew what it was that woke her.

Lothiriel used to think that at the center of her was a great emptiness. Her drawing master had said to her once, _I'm sorry to tell you this; that you're an artist at heart. And artists, in my experience, have very little center. _

Lothiriel knew she was not like her elder brothers. Elphir and Erchirion knew their identity; it sat in them and grew step by step like a pillar. And they built upon it, day after day until it was steady, until it was a solid thing.

What she had was not that. What she had was like an empty bowl, a waiting, a potentiality, a possibility, and a becoming.

She thought maybe if she let go, maybe if she went deeply enough into herself, and drew forth the roles she had taken on in this life and dissolved them into the wind, one by one, maybe she would disappear too. Maybe if she was successful in this, the Jurist might come one morning to the cage and find nothing but empty air between the bars, and a bloodied dress, neatly folded. Maybe she would vanish entirely, then, and be free, be only that emptiness within herself.

But that evening she came to the bottom of herself, and found that her drawing master was wrong. There was something there, something that dwelled at the center of her.

A feeling. Not of joy, or of peace. It was so close to anger that she almost could not recognize it, but then she knew; it was stubbornness. It was the fight at the bottom of her, attached at its stalk to her very heart.

And Lothiriel thought, what a hypocrite I was, to think that I had no war in my heart. For in that stubborn fight there was anger, too, a thirst for vengeance. _For I would break the bars of this prison, if I could._

There was a deep, sick pain in her stomach. Her head hurt even with thinking.

_At this moment, I would set the whole city on fire._

* * *

_I understand now, Jurist, I understand why you brought me here. It's not the gods of hate and anger that you're feeding me to; I see that now._

_It is as I have told you, lady. I serve the God of Justice._

_Not her, either. I have seen the faces of your people, and they do not speak to me in hatred. I am here not because you want to appeal to the darkness in them. I am here because you want to appeal to their strength, to their righteousness, to their outrage for the massacre done to those they loved. You've brought me here to satisfy their need and their right to be avenged of all the wrong that has happened to them. You're not a Jurist, but an Avenger._

_I am a Jurist, lady._

_Then you deceive yourself. You do not serve Justice; you serve Vengeance. __I can understand it now. For if I ever emerge from these cages, I will seek the full measure of my vengeance against you and everything here. I will knock these cages to the ground and cast their stones into the sea. I will break the bones of the Lords of Umbar and Harad, sink their ships and end their houses forever. I will set the whole of this city on fire and watch as it burns to the ground. For that is my right. For there is no gentleness in vengeance, only strength, and you will watch while it topples the mountains, as it changes the sea._

* * *

It would have meant more, she thought, if she wasn't feeling so weak. If she could say that to him, standing face to face with him.

But she could not.

She felt dizzy just speaking. Every movement seemed to hurt deep in her muscles. She no longer felt hunger, but as the Jurist turned away from her without speaking and walked back to the white marble buildings, there it was again, that deep pain in her belly. Lothiriel thought it might have been outrage.

Night had come. The square had emptied; there were only the guards in the evening, the gate was closed.

She had counted the days; she thought she might have been in the twenties.

The pain came again, a little stronger this time, deep in the belly.

Lothiriel felt a warmth between her legs.

Of course, her courses would come now. Since she had been to Rohan she had not been regular, something about the change in scenery, she told herself. Something about the new responsibilities placed upon her, that kept her awake in the evenings, that woke her in the early hours of the morning. Something about her unhappiness.

But how embarrassing now, to be caught in her courses, unprepared, in front of all Umbar.

She called for the Jurist. In the darkness even the shadow of his white robes was difficult to discern. She did not know if he turned back, but perhaps he might bring her a change of clothing, maybe some cloths.

But then a deeper cramp twisted in her belly, dropped her to the floor with a cold sweat breaking out all over her body. She heard her own ragged breathing, she heard the sounds of a human in pain, for it seemed that she could not control the noises that were coming out of her throat.

And the pain seemed to spread outward, not just in her abdomen. It was sharp like a knife, extending outward in a red wave, taking away her strength and beading the cold sweat upon her skin. All her limbs tingled as if her nerves were trying to reassert themselves after a shock.

And the pain went on. There was no escape from her own body, there was no escape from this thing coming from inside herself. No distance, no way to close her eyes and make it disappear, for it was still with her in the darkness.

The world was compressed into the space between breaths. Time no longer mattered but for the sensation that held her.

Breathe, Lothiriel.

The marble was cold against her forehead. The stone was hard beneath her hip, on her elbows. She started to shiver. There was a warmth between her legs.

"Jurist," she said, and then another cramping pain took hold of her.

"Eomer," she said.

But thirty days may have been too generous.

Maybe it would be now.

Lothiriel had thought nothing of missing her courses since she was abducted; but there was that morning, that morning before she left for Aldburg when Eomer had taken her in those arms in the half-waking darkness, tender and demanding by turns. Now, lying in her cage, the slow realization of what must be happening descended over her like a cold river in her heart.

The darkness was closing in.

She bade the memory come, that memory that she had kept warm and golden against her heart for all the long dark nights of doubt and hunger, for all the days and months before.

And the memory came, rising out of the dark depths of her mind, breaking its surface like the rising sun.

She had never spoken of it with Eomer, for fear that it would embarrass him, that it would made him feel that she had spied upon him in his weakness, that she had looked through an open window of his heart when she was not allowed. What advantage she had taken that day as he sat and wept in the Houses of Healing was allowed to a healer with her patient, but not to a a friend, and certainly not to an arranged bride, not until he had given it to her of his own free will.

The memory came. And it was as if she could feel that sunlight again, see the glow of spring within the white walls of the Houses of Healing. She was supposed to be getting ready for Eowyn's wedding party; Father had insisted that she be well-dressed and neatly groomed, with no dirt under her nails. For whatever her objections, it was the first time she was to meet the king of Rohan, and she was to make a good impression.

Lothiriel had escaped into the gardens, hidden her hair beneath her scarf. She didn't want to make a good impression, she thought. She wanted to complete her schooling, she wanted to be a healer, not a queen. She wanted to keep up her drawing, she wanted to paint.

One could not do all those, not if one wanted to run a nation. But father had his plans, and one must accommodate the Prince of Dol Amroth.

Spring was in full conflagration about her. She was weeding, the smell of mint floating in the air, when she heard him behind her.

She turned, then; and saw him clear.

Lothiriel didn't know who he was; she had never seen him before, but she had a memory for faces, and she thought that there had never been anything or anyone so beautiful as this weeping golden-haired warrior under that bright sun, pouring down like a river of light upon him. It was as if he was lit from within, sitting there behind her shining bright like one of the Maia over the fields of carnage, weeping without shame or fear, only with the full knowledge of the sadness in all the world.

And it seemed that he wept not only for himself, but for her too, for Gondor and Rohan, for all that has passed and for all that was to come.

And she had been touched; transformed at the mere sight of it. She forgot her own fears, in that second, her own woes, her own plans and worries. She felt all her pain leave her, at the sight of the grieving soldier with his sword by his side, his arms and heart still heavy with the tolls of war, his golden hair like a great halo of light, his face lit by the sun when he had turned to look upon her, his face wet with tears.

It was only that night that she learned his name, that _he_ was Eomer of Rohan.

Never had she seen him, before that day. And now she would never forget his face.

She watched his features that night of the wedding, watched it become tender and grieving by turns as he looked upon his sister, watched him then toss his head back and laugh with a ringing sound that seemed to shake the rafters.

And Lothiriel thought, what a heart he must have, to see what he as seen and yet be full of laughter, full of tears.

It was not war in his heart. It was gentleness. It was light.

And she was lost.

Her last thought before the darkness took her, was that he wept for her, too.

She had sought to give him comfort with her words, to give him some measure of safety in the storm of his grief, but it was he who should have spoken, it was he who should have told her what he knew, that he already knew her fate, that he wept for her, too, that day.

* * *

**_Eomer_**

"What is that obscuring the stars?" Amrothos asked.

They were supposed to be nearing the Havens of Umbar, the City of the Corsairs. All night the moon had been bright above them and the stars guided their way, swift in the darkness.

Three other men had gathered with Eomer and Amrothos at the prow. They squinted into that patch of sky that was without stars, yet glowed with a strange grey gleam in the night.

And the man named Gelion said, "it is smoke, sire."

So it was, a great plume of smoke rising from the City of the Corsairs like a cyclone in the night.

"My God," Amrothos said, "are the sails at their full?"

They were.

"We must hurry," Amrothos said, "I do not know what happened but this is not what Erchirion mentioned in his letter. They said they were going to set a few ships ablaze in the middle of the harbor, and steal into the city while the guards ran for the ships."

The acrid tang of burnt things came to them upon the air.

Then it seemed the sun was rising again.

On the East there was a boom as of thunder and a great red fire rose out of the darkness.

Something had gone terribly wrong.

Shadows of ships began to pass them in the night, fleeing from the smoke and the heavy air of Umbar.

Then Eomer saw it: the harbor and the ships were not in flames; the city was.

Ships bumped stern and bow in their hurry to depart. Eomer heard men shouting in the night, the frightful noise of great masts creaking, of wood splintering.

Theirs was the only vessel sailing _into_ the harbor, but in the crush of ships they barely made any progress.

"Let me off this ship," Eomer said, coming to Amrothos.

"You can't row across the whole of the harbor," the wheel turned swift under Amrothos' fingers, "You will be crushed before you get into the city. I want to get to Riel as much as you do, Eomer, but this is not to time dive rashly in. Now stop talking and let me do what I have been trained since birth to do."

Their ship was small, it turned with much greater ease through the masses of dark shapes unmorring from harbor and sailing out of the bay. Still the waves crashed against the hull, still the shouts of men carried to them from passing vessels that came too close for comfort.

Slowly, with excruciating, agonizing slowness they came closer and closer to shore. The smell was stonger in the air now, and there was the light and heat of the fire beating their faces, a burning feeling, as if they were sailing closer to the center of a sun.

"There," Amrothos pointed.

The fire consumed all the low-lying buildings and stalls along the water, eating up the docks and stopping only short of the lip of where the waves came against the stone. But a narrow stream that flowed into the harbor seemed to have stopped the horizontal spread of the fire. There was enough unburnt land to step ashore.

"It's not safe to dock," Amrothos shouted, "we'll have to take a boat."

They were running, the sound of their steps drowned out by the roar of flames, down, down the wooden planks to the side of the ship, into one of the row boats there, suspended a dizzying height from the water's lip.

A shout, and the ropes were loosened. Eomer was rowing before they even hit the water. Amrothos directed their ship, while Eomer and two others rowed. The heat of the fire seemed to be creating its own winds, it blew his hair in his face.

Then, the shore. The dark soil of another land.

"Down past the edge of the flames," Amrothos shouted.

The spitting beast raged just across the narrow waterway.

"Run, run!"

Then Eomer was running through the city. He had memorized the map that Grimund sent, he followed the river down and down, but all was burning beside him. The whole world seemed to be in conflagration.

He had wrapped cloth, soaked in cold water, around his face. But the smoke still choked him. Beside him he saw the men coughing, and then running on, running on.

_Hold tight, Lothiriel, hold tight._

And as he ran, his eyes streaming and his lungs burning inside his chest Eomer remembered that day long ago when he and Lothiriel went through the contract of their marriage together.

There was a part at the end, the part specifying, rather morbidly, the ways they were to be buried. Eomer, of course, would have a mound in the valley of the Simbelmyne. But Lothiriel, Lothiriel wished to be sent into the sea upon a ship, as had been done for her ancestors.

_You are my wife now, _he said, _you should lay beside me in the dark soil of our country._

She had looked at him. She said, _Perhaps one day we can change it. For now, sir, I pray you let it stand. For I wish to sail into the sea on a lone ship amidst a great pyre; for I wish nothing to be left of me._

Surely not, Lothiriel. Surely you did not do this, Eomer thought madly.

Far ahead, where the fire had not consumed road and sky and the very stones of the buildings, Amrothos waved and hand and they crossed the narrow bridge to the center of the city.

Eomer saw the gleam of white marble above the low houses. White that glowed orange and yellow in the dark with the shadows of flames.

Even with the wet cloth against his face air was hot against his lungs, it seemed to be slowly blistering the skin on his back. They were too close to it. They were too close. But the fire had not yet reached the Cages, it had not reached the center of the city. Eomer kept his head low and kept running.

Then there was the white marble wall before him, and he came upon a burst of strength he had not reckoned and left the others behind. He careened ahead, following the curve of that wall until he came to the center.

The Cages were before him, looming round shadows that reflected the flicker of the flames. All the guards had fled; there was no one there, no one to let any of them out.

The rightmost, Grimund had written, as one enters the courtyard.

_Hold tight, Lothiriel._

Eomer pumped his legs harder, he forgot that he needed air. He held her face in his mind. He imagined, he had imagined for so long, how her eyes would widen when she saw him, how she would say his name.

He longed to hear the sound of his name upon her lips. He even wanted her to call him _sir_ again, just so he might stop her mouth with his.

_I am here, Lothiriel._

But Eomer came to the end of the cages, to the last cage on the right as one entered the courtyard. He had reached it – and he stopped dead.

The cage was empty.

Eomer shook his head. It couldn't be.

But the lock was on, and there was no one within. Only a trail of blood on the floor, a pitcher, dry of its contents, tipped over on the corner.

There was not a soul within.

But Grimund had written; Grimund had seen Lothiriel there with his own eyes.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe she was there still, somewhere down the row of these white cages. Eomer coughed against the smoke in the air and ran back down the line.

Some of the prisoners had already succumbed. Others reached a hand out at him through the bars of their cage. He looked over every face, every single pleading face but there was no Lothiriel.

Then Eomer tripped over a foot and went flying into the pavement. His teeth clicked painfully together and the impact went all the way up the bones of his arms. As he scrambled onto his back he felt the kiss of metal on his neck.

But the one holding the sword was no Southron, here to defend the prisoners of the cages.

For one bewildered, demented moment Eomer thought it was Lothiriel who stood there above him, her black hair flowing in the hot billows of the wind, her cheeks blackened with soot, with trails of tears white upon her cheeks.

But as his eyes focused he saw the curved angle of the weapon held to his throat, the intricate scrollwork upon its handle. He looked at the fair features of the face above him, the braided hair, the slight point of the ear.

The elven woman said in Westron, "you are not of this land."

"No," Eomer swallowed against the point of her sword, "I have come for one whom I love."

The blade was withdrawn, and a strong slim arm clasped about his in that red nightmare of a city on fire, and hauled him to a stand.

Her eyes were hard, despite the tears on her face. There was blood upon her hands.

"As have I," she said, "Horse-lord, this place is cursed. Your loved one is dead, like mine."

She looked about them, looked at the fires licking at the darkness of the sky, "We have come to this city to find all our hopes in conflagration."

"Lothiriel is not dead," Eomer gritted his teeth.

"You may see her again," the elf said, "but only beyond all the days of the world. For there is no retrieving what has been lost here, in this Middle Earth. What is lost is gone forever. Farewell, Man of Rohan."

And she dashed through the smoke, swift as a black shadow in the red fog, and was gone.

There was the flash of something gold on the ground. Eomer bent to it and saw that it was a ring, half buried in the stone, flattened by the progress of many feet passing above it.

It was the ring he had given to Lothiriel on the day of their wedding.

She was here. She had to be here.

"Sire," Grimund had appeared by Eomer's side. In the darkness there was only the white of his eyes, flashing in the darkness.

They had no time for greeting.

"Where is she?" Amrothos emerged from the smoke.

"Sire, the city blew before we could even set our plan into action. I ran here. But she was not here, sire. She was gone. She was here this morning; I saw her with my own eyes."

"Where could she have gone, Grimund?"

"I do not know, sire, I do not know."

"Where do we go now, Grimund? Where do we find her? You lead, and I will follow. I will follow."

"Sire," Grimund put a hand on Eomer's arm, "Sire. I know that they do not take them out of the cage until – unless she was gone."

_Gone._

_You may see her again, but only beyond all the days of this world._

"What are you saying, man?" Amrothos demanded, "what are you saying?"

"She held out, all these weeks," Grimund said, "she was strong. But she's gone. It must have happened today."

Amrothos, for the first time, looked as if he had been struck dumb.

Eomer could not think about it now.

He said, "Get whoever's alive out of these cages and return to the ships. There are other men here, they will help you."

"Yes sire," Grimund said, "and will you come, sire?"

It seemed to be too cruel a thing, to have all his hope taken out of his hands on the very day he had come to claim them. And what was more cruel, now, with nothing there of her to meet his eyes, was that he still hoped; he still hoped that she was alive.

_I don't know what to do, Lothiriel._

She had no answer for him.

Eomer said, "The fire rages too great for us to remain. I will come with you."

_For where she has gone – wherever she has gone - I cannot follow._


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: Full steam ahead!

* * *

** VII**

_Tell me, I would ask him,_

_how can I endure the earth?_

_And he would say,_

_in a short time you will be here again._

_And in the time between_

_you will forget everything:_

_those fields of ice will be_

_the meadows of Elysium._

_- "Persephone the Wanderer," _

_Louise Gluck_

_**Lothiriel**_

Darkness. Soil. Trees. _Water_.

Lothiriel didn't know where she was. But there was the smell of soil, the shade of trees, and the sound of a stream nearby. She lifted her head, which felt heavy, pulsing.

She was sitting up, propped against a tree.

She was not in a cage.

She was not dead.

She could not see much. But on her right, a few paces away, there was the gleam of something silver, like a curtain, catching enough of the moonlight that she could tell it apart from the shadows.

Lothiriel blinked. The silver curtain was still until a wind came through; it fluttered before settling into motionlessness again.

It looked like hair, she realized. It looked like hair on a human head.

Then she saw the eyes.

Lothiriel stopped breathing. Maybe if she held still enough, it would not see her. Maybe it hadn't been watching her from the beginning.

A voice spoke.

Lothiriel had heard enough Haradic to know the language; the low sounds of it were a guttural grate in her ears.

He spoke but did not come any closer.

Then he said, in Westron, "can you understand me?"

Lothiriel nodded against the bark of the tree.

"Your name."

She opened her mouth, took a breath. He waited, but she could make no sound.

"Well?"

Lothiriel tried again.

"Are you mute?"

She shook her head, _no._

"Did you come from Umbar?"

_Yes._

"What were you doing there?"

Lothiriel thought she might have laughed. What _was_ she doing there?

"Did you know the man who brought you here?"

And she couldn't answer him that, either.

_Who?_

"Show me your hands," he said.

She pulled her wrists out to show him. There was a dark cloak over her shoulders. There was still a bandage over her right hand where she had cut herself with Eomer's ring. Under it her fingers throbbed gently. Then she noticed how the muscles between her fingers looked thin, almost gone next to the bone.

She stared at her hands, her once-strong hands. Now she had the hands of a dying woman.

The silver curtain seemed to grow larger in the night. Then she felt a breath fall on her face, and jerked aside.

"Be not afraid," he said.

She looked for his face in the dark. Her heart knocked in her chest.

There was a small flash and she saw a pair of deep-set eyes and silver hair, illuminated by a glaze of white light from a vial he wore at his neck.

He bent down to her; his nostrils flared at the tang of blood.

He closed a cool, calloused hand over both of hers, as if to deter her from fighting him. He needn't have bothered; she had barely enough strength to stay awake. He lifted back her cloak; pale eyes flickered over the blood on her dress, dried now, dark in the werelight.

"You were in the cages," he said, "I thought Anarwyn was misled when she told me about them. I thought, even the race of men would not dream of inflicting such cruelty upon their kin. But I was wrong."

His eyes skimmed over her, then came back to her face and held there, as if he could draw the answers from her eyes, her mouth, her nose, her ears, as if she emitted the truth of her like some vital miasma.

"There are patterns of blood on your dress. Blood that is not yours. Older. An arterial spray. Not of the neck or the leg; most likely the wrist. _You_ could not lose so much blood and live. So it is another prisoner's."

_Yes._

"You held his hand to your heart as he died," his eyes softened, "you thought it was a mercy that you killed him."

He drew the cloak back another inch, as if thumbing ahead through the pages of her tale. His hands were gentle, unhurried.

He saw the faint stain of dried blood that had trailed to her ankles, and blanched.A muscle danced in his jaw. He seemed to be on the verge of some great emotion.

"Did they harm you?"

Lothiriel remembered the pain then, and what happened. She put a hand to her belly. She shook her head.

"Not in the way I mean," quick eyes danced over her face, like a tool of infinite precision slowly chipping away at rock to find the truth beneath. "How did you escape?"

_I didn't._

"No? They let you go? One of them did. He must have been the one who brought you here. How strange; mercy at the hands of beasts."

He replaced the cloak on her shoulders.

He said, "I've frightened you, child. I did not know what manner of creature you were. I see now something terrible has happened to you."

He touched her lightly on her hand, his gaze held hers.

"I will not harm you," He said, "and with what strength I have, I will keep you safe."

There was water. The sweet cool of it slipped into her mouth, into her throat. He held the water at just the right angle by her mouth, and reached back to tuck his long silver mane behind one pointed ear.

He followed the direction of her gaze, and nodded. An elf in the woods of the Southern mountains.

It wasn't her time to die, Lothiriel thought. Not yet.

He put the flask of water into her grasp. Strong hands propped her more securely against the tree.

"Tell me your name, child."

Lothiriel opened her mouth to speak.

Still, no sound.

She had seen it too in some soldiers, after the war. With a severe enough head injury, one could lose his sense of smell, of sight, of speech. She had pitied all of them. But sometimes she would look at the intelligence straining to emerge from behind the eyes of those who could not speak, and think that their loss was the worst.

"It will come," the elf-lord said, placing a cool calloused hand on hers, gently removing it from where she clutched at her throat.

In his eyes, a quiet confidence.

She nodded, and saw him smile: quick, bright, almost conspiratorial.

"Anarwyn has spare clothes, but you are surpassing tall," he made a rueful face, "you might have to wear mine, instead."

He stood and went deeper into the shadow, where he emerged with a mare. From her saddlebags he retrieved a square package wrapped in green leaves.

"Eat, lady."

Lothiriel took the pack from him. Lembas.

Her training came back to her. She remembered the refugees who had come into Dol Amroth – starving men, women, and children – and how they had to be kept on reduced rations for nearly two weeks.

For hunger kills, Merwen had told her, but refeeding a man too quickly will kill just as surely, only more painful.

And while she was still in possession of herself, Lothiriel broke the bread into four, took a quarter and shoved the rest back into his hands.

He was confused, "You must eat. You look very ill."

She held his eyes and shook her head.

And he seemed to understand. He wrapped the lembas back into its leaves, and took it away.

While she tested the food, he built a small fire.

Lothiriel took a sip of water, and a small bite. The lembas was dust on her tongue. Lothiriel felt as if she couldn't taste anything, couldn't feel anything save for the texture of it, the crumble of something that would have, on another day, been delight.

There was no answering growl from her stomach. There was no hunger in her, just tiredness. She forced herself to chew, to take another drink of the water.

The firewood was dry from long days of sun and it barely gave off any smoke.

He sat down across from her. This time she could see him better, by the flicker of yellow flames. Green eyes, and hair so lightly blond that it looked silver. He had no braids in his hair but wore it loose about his shoulders.

Lothiriel had met with many elves in Dol Amroth. They came to sail in the swan ships; to gaze upon the sea. Even the most light-spirited of them had that look of having seen far too much. But this one seemed more ancient than all the others she had ever met, older and wearier, but steadier too, steady as the roots of old trees.

He watched as she ate. The palms of his hands were shiny with callouses. On the back of one, a raised scar that looked new.

"You are a healer?"

_Yes._

"I am a gardener; I have been one all my life. But you and I are both warriors, now; for that is what happens to healers and gardeners when the war comes to them."

He brought her a pair of boots, soft and well-oiled and a gleaming brown. When Lothiriel motioned to him that she felt well enough for it, he found her a change of clothes, and cloth and water with which to wash. Then he went out of the clearing.

She took off the dress and the smallclothes. By the shadows, the dress was a huddled shape, as if she had molted and discarded an old layer of skin that had weathered too much. Lothiriel did not think; she cast it into the fire.

She washed the blood off herself. The night wind of Harad was a warm caress on her skin.

His trousers were the right length, as he had predicted. Lothiriel hadn't worn trousers for years, not since she was back in Dol Amroth, running around after Amrothos, frequenting establishments that would have elicited the sternest of reprimands from Father.

She rolled the sleeves once and saw runes embroidered upon the grey tunic, gleaming by moonlight. Old runes for protection, for staying hidden from enemies, for safe return. For all that it looked like some rough homespun cloth, its plainness was a disguise; for there was powerful magic within the grey tunic.

Lothiriel wondered who had put them there, who had sewn them into the shirt. And it almost seemed a strange idea, to think that this millennia-old elf-lord must have someone who loved him, someone with the power to cast such magic into an ordinary tunic.

For unimpressive a sight as he made, in plain shirt and trousers and boots, there was something in that hair so lightly gold that it was almost silver, something in that face, in those leaf-green eyes.

He had given her a pin to secure the black cloak. She looked at it now in the light; the shape of a hastate leaf. Silver-edged veins ran quick through three lobes; a deep green gleam.

Lothiriel was still staring at the clasp, wondering where she had seen it before, when the silver elf stepped back into the enclosure. He had filled the water skin. He smiled, at the sight of her.

Seeing that smile, that gentle light in that strong face, Lothiriel wondered – for the first time in days – if she might actually make it home.

* * *

She woke sometime later, disoriented. Their campfire had faded to tongues of red licking at embers. But the sky was strange; there was a flare of something red and orange on the horizon, something that filled up half the sky.

The moon was hidden.

"It's past midnight," her companion said, his features thrown into harsh relief, "and that light comes from the city of the Corsairs, where Anarwyn has gone."

Lothiriel motioned that he should go.

"No," he said, though there was reluctance in his voice, "I will not leave you here, alone."

She frowned at him.

He rocked back on his heels, and sat once more.

"Anarwyn left to scout our path, earlier this morning. She is a more than capable warrior," he said, "Rest. I will keep the watch."

When Lothiriel woke again it was to the sting of fire in her nostrils. She started, thinking that the fire had reached them, that the blaze had stolen through the hills and into the trees as she slept.

But no, there was no fire. Only an elven lady with long dark hair at the edge of the clearing. She was bathed in the light from the flames.

"It is done, my lord," she said.

Under the soot that covered her face and her hands, her hunter's garb was streaked with blood. Her quiver of arrow sat empty on her back. The blades of two long knives were sheathed at her sides.

Her hands were bloody.

The silver-haired elf stood before her.

"Anarwyn, what happened?"

"They killed him, my lord," she said, "They killed Corin."

_Corin, _Lothiriel thought. _They were here for Corin._

"We were walking the Road of Harad while he died in his cell, alone, and in pain."

"Anarwyn, what have you done?"

She said, "I gave him the burial he deserved."

"_You_ set fire to the harbor?"

"I found the warehouse where the men store their fuel, where they rendered the flesh of great whales that dwell in the deep, just to keep their lights burning. Who are they, my lord, to inherit Middle-Earth from us?" her voice was a low throb against Lothiriel's ears, "and I thought, I should give Corin a pyre worthy of the greatest kings of Harad. It is not the harbor that burns, my lord; all the city burns."

"There were innocents there, Anarwyn, by the Valar, children and slaves," all composure was gone from his voice, "Anarwyn, even those who do not pass through the halls of Mandos must face judgment."

"And I must face mine." She drew her horse skittering to her and leapt upon his back, "My vengeance is complete. My conscience is light. My hand is steady, my lord."

He looked stunned.

"The blood on your hands will not fade, Anarwyn," he said.

She did not look at him from atop her horse.

She said, "He is gone, my lord, and now all Middle-Earth seems to me a feast for a dead man. I hear only the call of the sea. I do not know by what strength or stubbornness you persist here now that the Lady is gone, but I do not have it. My hopes have died and taken my strength from me."

Deft hands turned the reins, and she looked back one last time.

"I go North tonight, my lord. To death or the havens; it matters not. I go toward him," she said, "The fire rages and will not be put out by human means. I suggest you depart as well. Perhaps I will see you one day beyond the havens. One bright greening day, and by then, all things will be forgiven."

Her horse leapt from the clearing, and was gone.

Beside Lothiriel, the silver elf-lord remained standing, his face contorted in anguish. Although he made no sound, she saw the trails of tears on his cheeks.

"Is this all that's left?" he asked in his native tongue, a question to the red-glowing sky, "is this all that's left to me in this Middle-Earth, my Lady? Ashes and dust. Ashes and dust."

The smell of smoke was stronger now. Lothiriel could feel the heat seeping through the darkness of the forest, through the cool between the branches. A great plume of smoke rose in the sky, obscuring the stars. She tasted ash in the back of her tongue.

"Come," the elf-lord took Lothiriel's arm, "let us not linger here in this place."

* * *

_**Grimund**_

Sometime before the day broke, it began to rain. The monsoon moved in from the oceans to pour its fury over both sea and land. The waves churned. From where he stood upon the ship's deck, Grimund's stomach churned with it.

A bell rang. The hour was up. Grimund nodded to Amrothos, who stood stony-faced and pale at the stern, straight and unblinking despite the rain lashing his face.

Grimund held the railings with both hands as he descended into the ship's belly, though the effort of gripping inflamed the burns on his palms. Gingerly he made his way past the crew quarters and to the sick bay, which consisted of nothing more than a curtain and a hammock by the open port window.

His tread was heavy upon the wood. He knocked thrice, sighed, and drew back the curtain.

"My king," he said, "Your watch is over; it is my turn now."

Eomer did not move.

"My king," Grimund said, "the fourth bell has rung."

"Sit with me, my friend," said Eomer.

Grimund sat.

For a while Eomer said nothing. The only sound in the room was the ragged breathing of the lone survivor of the Cages.

Two they rescued; a man and a woman. The smoke was thick and choking; only two were alive when Grimund finally broke open the locks. But the woman was dead when they reached Amrothos' ship.

They left her on the dock, by the water, a cloth to cover her face. They did not know her name, or what crime she had committed.

The fire was almost its own creature; alive, intelligent and cunning. They saw the blaze spring up in the middle of a row of unburnt houses. The fire seemed able to skip from one street to another, to leap four or five houses at a time.

The air had been incendiary. The heat seemed so intense at times as they ran that Grimund thought he might be burned just by the air around him. He had the blisters on his back, on his hands, to prove it. Eomer, too, had to have his hands treated. They still wore the bandages; the sting of the burn ate into their palms, as if they held live coals.

Grimund's head ached. His lungs felt heavy, as if he could not draw enough air. Even now, with a round window opened to the air, with the rain coming in, he felt as if he couldn't draw a deep breath.

The burnt man in the hammock breathed painfully, as if the fire still raged in his lungs. They brought him below deck once the rain started, but made sure he was near a window, made sure there was the cool air moving across his face. They did not know his name either, or his crime. It didn't seem to matter.

The man had one of his eyes put out, as his punishment. A new bandage was fresh-stained with blood where it wrapped around his head, and still it could not conceal the long raised scar that went from his forehead to his cheek.

His hair had been sheared. His eyebrows and beard were singed off by the heat of the flames. His skin had an unhealthy ruddiness to it; whether from a burn or from the smoke it was hard to say.

He looked a mess. Grimund was not certain he would last the night.

And not for one second since the burnt man came on the ship did Eomer leave his side.

It was why Grimund had come down, to relieve Eomer of his watch. His young king seemed to have placed all of his thwarted hopes of rescuing Lothiriel onto this dying man. And Grimund did not want Eomer to see the man die; no matter how strong Eomer was, he was not made of stone. No matter how strong, for some things, he still needed a shield.

"It was Eowyn who sat the night with Theodred when he died," Eomer said.

"Sire?"

"I had seen his wound; I knew he was dying. But it was Eowyn who sat the night with him, and into the morning, when he died."

Eomer stopped twisting and untwisting the cords hanging on the side of the hammock. He stood and put a cool wet cloth against the gasping man's forehead. He adjusted the pillows so that the patient sat more upright, so the fluid would not accumulate so fast in his lungs.

Grimund had never seen his king in the role of a nurse, before. The young man's hands, which yielded spear and sword with such deadly efficiency, were hesitant and clumsy in their gentleness.

"Mother, too," Eomer went on, "they say she died of a broken heart, but I was there; she had a cancer in her breast that ate into the wall of her chest. It bled and became infected. The healers told me that it was the work of women; it was unseemly for me to be there. But Eowyn sat with her, night after night.

"The morning she died, I was out on my horse, tailing a Marshal on his patrol. I wanted to get out of the house; I wanted to be doing something else, anything else, but waiting. But Eowyn sat with her, until the end."

Eomer sat down, ran a head through his hair. There was still a faint coating of soot upon his face. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked exhausted. He looked like a man who had lost his wife. But Grimund saw the determined gleam in his eyes.

"It was the sort of work that my sister resented, the waiting, the mourning, the burying. She wanted to do what I did, to show her courage in the open field, to fight. She thought that what I did was true courage. But it is her courage that I envy the most; that courage to wait for death to come and take away the ones you love, the courage to face that helplessness."

Eomer looked up, anguish in his face.

"I have seen so many men die, Grimund. And still I am so afraid of it. I thought I wasn't, but I am. Death in battle seems to be something entirely different than this, this waiting. I know that in the end it will win; but you see, I must sit here, because a man of Rohan should not cower in the face of death, even if he is afraid."

"Then I will sit this watch with you, sire," Grimund said.

Together they listened to the ragged breathing of the man, watched as his lungs drew in air again and again, watched him persist, despite the pain.

Above them, the full fury of a monsoon.

And Grimund heard Eomer say a little later, quietly, so quietly he wasn't sure if he was supposed to hear it. He heard Eomer say, "because I should have been by her side; as I should have been with mother and with Theodred, when they died. Because I would been with Lothiriel."

* * *

_**Lothiriel**_

"Stay here," said the elf-lord, "while I fetch you a horse."

It was the first thing he said to her since they set out.

That night, after Anarwyn left, he too seemed to be beyond the reach of speech. He had put Lothiriel atop his bay mare, strapped her legs onto the saddle with bolts of cloth so she would not fall off. To her surprise he did not climb up behind her. Instead he shed his heavier clothes and jogged alongside the horse with an easy, long-legged stride, breathing no faster as if he were walking at a quick clip. A quiver of arrows was slung across his shoulders. A deadly two-headed ax was within easy reach.

When the first drops of rain broke Lothiriel from an uneasy slumber, he drew out another cloak from the saddlebags and put it on top of her black one.

The rain had intensified. Lightning parted the clouds and thunder rolled like an army across the land. Every drop of water rolled off the fabric of her cloak. Beside her, he kept running, and the rain trailed down his face like tears.

Behind them, in Umbar, the fire sputtered and smoked, and finally died.

As the sun rose Lothiriel saw neat row of fruit trees in the full pink blooms of spring. It seemed that by cover of night they had trespassed within the boundaries of an orchard. The fruit trees went on for about a half hour, before the ground gave way to rolling hills and great trees.

And in the distance, upon a green field, she could make out the shapes of horses grazing.

The elf-lord was going to fetch her a horse.

He had given Lothiriel a foothold, and hoisted her into a low-lying branch of an oak tree, for concealment. She sat there, clutching the trunk, hoping her dizziness wouldn't come back.

"You are not going to fall," he reassured her.

He smiled again, whispered something to his bay mare – _keep an eye on the human, _probably – and was gone, running with that light step across the grass, into the sunlight. Against that silver-blond hair the light seemed to gather, magnify a thousandfold.

Beneath her the bay mare flicked an ear and went on grazing.

It seemed such a small thing to him, to run all the night, to say to her, _I will keep you safe._ Indeed it may be a small thing to one such as he, to travel all the way back across the fields of near Harad, back to Gondor. Back home.

Lothiriel wondered what it might mean, to go home now. She was so close in time with the Lothiriel she had been, that it seemed she could just go home and take up all her projects again, take up her place by Eomer again.

But then, she didn't feel quite like that Lothiriel anymore. For something had been lost, forever.

Yesterday she had been numb. She had thought, before sleep overcame her, let me figure it out tomorrow. Let me feel everything then. She thought that maybe when she woke, the emptiness would be gone, and there would be a feeling there, instead.

But there was nothing.

In her time as healer, Lothiriel had seen many women miscarry. Some would weep for days, and others were stoic. She remembered the words she learned to say to them, that it was no one's fault, that it could not have been prevented.

She told them: they had time, time enough and youth enough to try again, and succeed.

Lothiriel did not even imagine that some potential of life had been there, inside her. She could not lose something she never had in the first place, could she? (Would it have been a boy, with Eomer's golden mane, or a girl, dark haired and grey-eyed like her?)

It seemed all too fitting for her time so far with Eomer: something that was over before it had properly begun. And Lothiriel didn't know if she had enough time, to try again.

_She didn't know if she wanted more time with Eomer._

A whinny drew her up from the well of her mind. For there was the elf-lord, and he was atop a roan mare, galloping toward her.

The placid bay below her perked an ear at the new arrival, but did not interrupt her grazing.

He dismounted so lightly it seemed he barely touched the ground with his feet. He was grinning like a boy as he held a hand out to her.

Lothiriel shook her head at him in mock consternation.

"The lord of these lands is a rich, fat, spice merchant, and he has horses to spare," he said, "now, we must ride fast."

They galloped into the bright sun, streamed across the hillside like stars.

Lothiriel had once been, in younger years, something of a runner. The pounding rhythm of a run unknotted something inside her, laid the it flat along the long road, smoothed things free.

It was nearly the same now, as she gave the bay a free rein. They were gaining speed. Lothiriel's hair flew out behind her, and the wind blew in her face. She felt strong. Before her the silver elf rode bareback, that grin of a much younger man still upon his face.

She heard a breathless sound and realized that it was her, laughing.

And it was as if her thoughts came free at last.

_She thought: It was the nature of the world for the stronger to prey on the weak. Princess of Dol Amroth or not, Lothiriel was no exception._

_She thought: She did not regret marrying Eomer. But he did not – could not love her; she could deceive herself no longer about that. She would no longer hold out false hope._

_For there was no avoiding the pain of the world; no avoiding what had happened to her just now, no running from the pain that descended on her, unwitting. But she would be damned before she tortured herself any more with useless hopes, with a failed marriage._

It seemed so obvious, so obvious now.

Finally they slowed as they went into a neighboring wood. Lothiriel was breathing hard. The elf-lord was smiling as she drew alongside him.

And when she had caught her breath, she said to him, "I am Lothiriel, Queen of the Riddermark and Princess of Dol Amroth. Imrahil is my father; Eomer is my husband. My home lies far north of here, in Rohan. And I owe you my life, my lord."

The silver elf regarded her for a moment.

Then he said, "I am called Celeborn; once I was the Lord of the Golden Wood. But the blooming hour has departed from Lothlorien, and my kin gone across the sea. We are well met, Lady Lothiriel. For I will help you return to your home, with whatever strength I have."

* * *

They rested during the hottest part of the day. The silver elf – Celeborn – woke and found Lothiriel trying to decipher the Dwarvish runes on his ax.

He brought her water, and checked over the wound in her hand, as he did now every day. But then he brought over his ax so she could examine it better.

"Not too many elves favor these," he said, "they think it below them to use the weapons of dwarves. But she has been at my side for many long years and has not failed me yet. Do you like her?"

She nodded.

"As well you should," he sobered, "the long ax was Corin's weapon, as well, though he loved his bow best."

He stood and went to the bay mare. From beneath the saddle bags he unbuckled a weapon, near twin to his own, albeit slighter, the steel less hefty around the blade, and instead of silver this one shone with a warm coppery tinge.

He hefted the weight of it in his arms, and looked at her, measuring one against the other.

"This will actually serve you quite well, once you are recovered and have gotten the strength back in your arms." he said, "you're of a height with him. Though height is not required to wield an ax."

She thought he would say, _strength is._

But he said, "it is the willingness to look your enemy in the eye. In that way I suppose it is much like a sword, but a sword you can wield from horseback. An ax requires that you have your feet on the ground. An ax puts you face-to-face."

He passed the ax to her with deceptive ease and watched as Lothiriel struggled to right the weapon in her arms.

_We are both warriors now, for that is what happens to healers and gardeners when the war comes to them._

"I had planned for us to go by the water," he said, "after what happened in Umbar I couldn't risk it. We will take the route by land until we reach the next port city, near South Gondor. Then let us take the river up to Gondor, where you have kin. Is this acceptable to you?"

"Yes," she said, tears in her eyes, "yes."

* * *

_**Eomer**_

They came into the port of Osgiliath three days ago. Erchirion had left them near the Isle of Tolfalas, sailing directly for Dol Amroth. But Amrothos did not go home, to his father, to his own city. He stayed in Osgiliath. He had work here yet to do, he said.

The man from the Cages was still alive; he was taken to the Houses of Healing. Eomer went and looked on him each day.

Eomer did not yet have heart enough to return to Rohan.

Around his neck, next to his medallion, he wore the crushed remnant of the ring that he once gave to Lothiriel.

Eomer couldn't sleep. Eowyn was worried, he knew.

Even Grimund was worried.

He would take Firefoot out of his stall in the night and put him through the long paces around the fields of Pelennor.

It seemed to Eomer that he was waiting for something, some sign.

It seemed to him that she could not simply disappear, with no word, no hint of where she had gone.

It was past midnight, as he was out riding. The sky so clear it seemed that there was no barrier between the earth under his feet and the stars above him.

Firefoot did not scent her. But Eomer saw her clear: a ghost of white galloping somewhere before them. The bright mane, unbloodied, the strong legs pounding the earth. A descendant of the Meara, riderless, galloping free across the plains of Middle-Earth.

Eomer gave Firefoot the rein, and they chased after the fleeing form of Almaren.

_Almaren_, he called_, is your mistress with you?_

But she did not hear him. She was no longer answerable to him, or any of his kin. She never had been answerable to them.

She went on; she went on into the woods by the Anduin, and disappeared.

Eomer dismounted. He led Firefoot through the dark of woods, to the water's edge. It seemed as if he could see the departing sheen of silver over the bend in the river.

He sat down by the banks of the Anduin.

_You did more than I could for your mistress, Almaren. And you were right to scorn me. How much of her unhappiness was because of me? Did she tell you, in the quiet blue dark of morning, that she grew sorrowful in Rohan? Is that why you never took to me?_

The ghost of Lothiriel had long since ceased her haunting of Eomer, and now Almaren too had departed. He found that he felt lonely, with them both gone.

_If you see your mistress, Almaren, will you tell her that I'm sorry? _

_Will you tell her that I dream of her?_

* * *

_**Lothiriel**_

Sleep ambushed her. One minute they had set off with the setting sun above them, in and out of the shade of passing forests once more, and the other second she was woken by a gentle hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake. Dawn was washing over the horizon.

The elf-lord would help her off the mare. He would search for a tree he liked, whispering softly as he stepped between the trunks and roots, his voice sometimes questioning, sometimes encouraging. Lothiriel couldn't be sure, but it was almost as if the foliage grew more thickly around them as he went about this.

He did not speak much; it was rather like being with Grimund, that way. Though the silences of the elf-lord – she could not simply think of him as Celeborn; it seemed too much presumption to even think of him by name – were pensive and not so hostile.

Still he guarded his words, and wandered in and out of the forests of his memories while they sat by the fire. And it was easy for Lothiriel to be silent with him, and let the deep cool quiet of the forests wash over her mind, taking away the bitter thoughts, leaving only clarity.

She thought about Eomer.

She thought about what she would have to do, when she arrived home.

She still longed for him. It was as if he had put a spell on her; cursed her with an illness. Or perhaps the feeling had slept inside her all this while, but he was the one to call it awake. It came for him, into the sunlight, and it raised its long neck, and it was called Longing.

She thought that he was the key, the cure, the antidote, and that if she had him then this desire would disappear, would melt into contentment, would be drowned in the ocean of her happiness. She thought that if she married him, he would lead her to the answers of everything, that he was the door.

She was a fool, she thought. She was a fool, but she could not fault herself for it. It had seemed so fated, that morning. She would do it all, again.

But now it seemed that a parting was to come.

The leap she made from strangers to intimacy had been based upon a guess, a feeling. It was a logical fallacy. It was unreasonable on her part to dream so high; it was unreasonable for him to agree to marry her.

It was useless to keep trying, if he couldn't trust her with his heart. For she could not live like that, on rationed gentleness.

And when she thought of it that way, the answer was obvious. So obvious that it was almost painful.

Eomer needed someone more open, more like himself, who spoke more easily to him, a creature of higher spirits. They would have an easier time of it. There would not be a fight for every step, for every tenderness, for every smile.

He needed a woman to whom he could give his heart with ease, one who had the key to unlock him, a woman with some mysterious turn of phrase, some lightness in her step. A woman who was not Lothiriel.

And for her, for her, the torture of it would finally end, the endless self-doubting, the nights of sleeplessness, wondering why, why, why.

It was time to grow up, Lothiriel thought. It was time to act on what she knew, what she had known all along.

It would hurt. Gods, how it would hurt. But she would let the pain come, and let it depart from her. Then she would be free.

She would set them both free.

"Your thoughts give you pain, child?" the elf-lord said.

"Yes," Lothiriel blinked back the sting of her eyes.

"Tell me."

"Can you help me?"

He smiled at her, his rueful, knowing smile.

"What is there to do," Lothiriel said, "when love fails between husband and wife?"

He regarded her in silence.

All his years pressed on her like a weight from behind his eyes.

"You know what must be done, child."

For some time she thought he had said all he would say.

Then he continued.

"I suppose one always lives in hope of love," he said, "But sometimes, when love is no longer strong enough to hold back despair, when silence comes as a gulf between the two of you, when your hearts yearn for opposite shores of the world, it must come to be that you live parted forever, sundered by the sea."

She wanted to ask him, _is that what happened to you and your Lady? Is that why you linger here, though she has sailed for Valinor?_

But she did not have to. The answer was there in his face.

* * *

When Lothiriel finally came to the gates of Ithilien, they mistook her for an elf.

In the ports of Southern Gondor they happened upon a ship skimming the waves in a sunlit cove. The elf-lord recognized its make and hailed it. A ship from the Grey Havens, he told Lothiriel later, after he had embraced the fair-haired elf who emerged from the ship, laughing with ease and delight.

Lothiriel thought that he might leave her as she descended the ship at the port of Osgiliath, but he did not.

"I said I'd see you safely home, to your kin," he said.

Her strength was coming back to her. Lothiriel felt nearly herself.

The wound in her hand, where Corin's blood had run into hers, had healed until nearly nothing remained. Yet sometimes it still sent a cold numbness up to her elbow, sometimes it glowed warm and felt feverish.

The elf-lord examined the scar each morning, touching her arm gently, taking her pulses and looking under her skin as if for some sign. But there was none. Her arm was strong.

Yet however well she felt, as Lothiriel rode the bay mare onto the road that led to Ithilien, her legs were shaking. Her heart drummed far too quick a tattoo inside her chest. Her breath came too fast.

It was spring again. All around her, the notes of spring, as the sun made its slanting descent over Ithilien.

All were halted at the gates, to state their business. The soldier at the door and his companion had already spotted her and Celeborn, atop their mounts.

"Eldar," breathed the taller man on the right.

Lothiriel recognized him. It was Beregond, who was Faramir's right hand. Beregond, who should have known her. She had sat beside him as he waited for Faramir to waken in the Houses of Healing. She had danced at his wedding with his beautiful, red-haired wife.

_Was she really so changed?_

"Eldar," he smiled at the two of them, "what brings you to the City of the Steward?"

For a moment Lothiriel's voice failed her, and it was the elf-lord who said, "Man of Gondor, we would speak to the Steward on matters concerning Harad."

Beregond looked at the elf-lord closely, as if suddenly hesitant, but good manners reasserted themselves even as the canny eyes lingered.

And he led them through the torch-lit town where the settlers still milled about, finishing their business of the day. Lothiriel felt as if tiny hot pins were being stuck into her right arm, down to her fingertips. She felt her heart galloping like a horse in her chest. Her legs felt weak, and the Lothiriel who lived before may have fainted, but she was stronger than that now.

They walked on, following Beregond's lead, through the city paths, until the people around them became fewer, until they were walking the winding steps up Emyn Arnen. Their horses were given to the groom to be stabled.

Beregond opened the gate to the gardens.

He said, "My Lord the Steward is in his study, and will be with you – "

He fell silent as he looked on her.

She must have been crying, Lothiriel realized, brushing a numb hand across the tears on her cheek.

"Are you quite well, Lady?" said the guard, and she could feel those inquiring grey eyes taking her in again, trying to find the source of her distres.

She could find no other words, then.

"Beregond, do you not know me?"

Another moment passed.

"By the Valar," he breathed, "I'll bring Faramir."

* * *

Faramir could not make it out. His old friend pulled him away from his scribe and his books with barely any of his usual calm, and as they walked through the halls he started rambling about elves and the Haradrim and the old blood of Dol Amroth.

"Beregond," Faramir said, "I'm afraid I have no idea what you're trying to tell me."

His friend merely continued on to the sprawling gardens behind house.

He pushed open a gate.

An elven lord and lady stood there, one golden, one dark. The lady looked as if she had been weeping.

Faramir took one step into the garden, looking for clues in the lady's face as to what so overset Beregond.

She was beautiful, as all her kind, but also reed-thin, her cheeks hollowed out and the cords of her neck standing out against her skin, the flesh by her temples carving slightly inward. He could have cut his hand at the angle of her jaw. She looked exhausted.

It was a look that Faramir had often seen in prisoners from the Morgul cells, who had long been fed little or none at all.

But there was something familiar about that face, he realized, under the glamour that filled all the Eldar, the sense of ancient calm that they seemed to have, for when he actually looked at her face, he saw –

He saw Lothiriel.

* * *

_**Eomer**_

She was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, lit by the lamps of the gardens and the moon. They told him when he returned from the Houses of Healing; and he did not believe them. He did not believe them but still he went into the Garden of Emyn Arnen.

And there she was. There she was.

It was everything he had ever wanted. Eomer felt as if his heart would rip a hole through his chest. He rushed down the steps. He would have run, if he thought his legs wouldn't give way.

He came close to her.

"Lothiriel," he said, holding out his arms.

But she stepped back.

She stepped away from him.

She smiled at him not with warmth but with apology.

There was a coldness in the air.

Then he saw that she was changed. She looked strange, somehow, fey, almost as if she wasn't really here with him, as if he had conjured her up from pure wishing.

The had always been an elven cast to her features, ever since he had first known her, but tonight it seemed the fey light in her face shone in full force, that she was not Lothiriel, but some elf masquerading as Lothiriel.

She was changed. The blush was gone. The fluttering hands had stilled. Her eyes were tired, and she looked gaunt and weary.

He had thought about this moment, fantasized it about for days, weeks. In secret he had let himself hope that she was still alive, that she would return to him.

He thought of he would take her into his arms and hold her tight. He thought of what he would say to her, then.

But now it was here. Now, as she raised those bleak grey eyes to his, bit off something that was barely a smile, and clasped her hands before her as if readying herself for yet another battle, it was like a cold knife in his heart.

Still, Eomer tried.

"Lothiriel," he said, stepping forward, closing that last gap between them and catching her cool hands in his. Here she was, not his ever-altering memory of her, not the ghost, haunting him just out of sight. Here she was, in the flesh.

"Lothiriel," he said.

Her fingers relaxed into his. She tried to smile at him again, but this one looked nearly as pained as the one before.

She said, "As you can see, sir, I am alive and well."

Eomer had everything to say to her. Why wouldn't she look at him? Why was her hand just slightly resting against his, as if waiting for the precise moment to pull away?

He knew he was frowning again. He could feel the tension stretching across his face. _Try to show care on your face, try to show tenderness,_ he thought, but he was so struck by the sight of her, how tired, how strange she looked, tanned by the sun yet so otherworldly, so terribly fragile with the flesh caving in on her temples, with wrists that looked like they would break with the slightest pressure.

He was suddenly so furious, that the heat of it obliterated everything. He was so furious that he couldn't think of happiness. He tried to let the anger go but failed. He wanted to find the person responsible for this change, this strangeness, and punish him.

It was one thing to imagine her back by his side. But now, to see her, to see her.

She looked up to catch the full force of his frown as he stared down at her.

She bit her lip, and ducked her head.

"We came for you, Lothiriel," Eomer said.

"I heard," she said, still looking at his hands where they held hers, "thank you."

This was not at all how the conversation was supposed to go.

"Did you, ah, miss me a little?" she said, glancing up at him.

He started at her, bewildered.

She ducked her head again.

'Nevermind, I - "

"I did," he interrupted her, "I missed you."

She seemed strangely appeased by that. She flashed him a smile, this time a little more genuine.

"How did you," Eomer swallowed against the strange tightness in his chest, "How did you escape from there?"

Her face fell.

She seemed to be steeling herself for something. Her hands had tightened into fists, under his.

They shook.

"I didn't escape."

"Then, then how –"

"He let me go. He let me go because –"

Her mouth was open, but no sound came out.

She drew back one of her hands and clasped at her throat, and for a second he was worried that she couldn't breathe. Then she looked up at him, the there sat the horror still unfaded, blazing at him from behind her eyes.

"I lost the child," she blurted, "I lost our child."

"_What_?"

"That's why they let me go," the words were coming easier now, "I miscarried. I must have gotten pregnant that week I left."

Eomer felt as if someone had dented his windpipe.

He sank down for a moment, on the bench.

"I'm so sorry," she was weeping now, "I didn't know. I'm so sorry."

"Lothiriel, Lothiriel," he reached for her.

But she had hidden her face between her hands, and was weeping with an awful intensity that he could hardly bear to watch. She ignored him and ran, turning a corner and disappearing into the maze of the gardens.

By the time he stumbled back into the house, they said that she had taken to her rooms and asked not to be disturbed.

My God, a child, thought Eomer, dizzy with the idea and then its loss.

He wanted to give her space, he wanted to give her time enough to come to him again. He did not want to rush her.

He paced outside her door, watched the light behind the door waver and dim, watched as it was extinguished. He wanted her to come out of those rooms and into his arms. He wanted to speak to her, finally, of everything, everything.

But it wasn't what she wanted. The light turned off in the chamber and no one emerged.

So instead he returned to the great chair in his own chambers, in confusion, in fury, heartsore and a thousand words fighting to get free.

For the first time in days, he must have slept, a dark undreaming sleep, for he woke to the dawn and a servant woman bringing him a tray with a note upon it.

_**Dear sir**_, it read,

**_I must apologize for my outburst last night. Understanding is slow to come after what happened, and I am afraid that at times my mind and my feelings are still not quite my own._**

**_You will forgive me, I know. You have always been very kind to me. I hope I will be able to speak more reasonably about what had happened, in time. If you still wish to hear the tale then, I will tell you all._**

**_The reason for this letter is that I had further words to say to you last night, when our meeting was cut short. However, given my current state I deemed it wiser to do so by letter, as I can be clear without fear of being overtaken by feeling._**

**_In short, it seems to me that our situation is clear._**

**_The term of our handfasting is expired. We have no child, there is no love between us, and we are not bonded. _****_I would ask you to allow our union to draw to its natural close with the end of the handfasting, without taking up a bonding ceremony. _**

**_I understand that you would have certain reservations about this matter, but allow me to reassure you that bond between Gondor and Rohan would not in any way be diminished by my departure from the Mark; that bond goes far deeper, far beyond our arrangement._**

**_Please do not take what I have written regarding love to be a criticism or a complaint. You have treated me with every courtesy, with respect and gentleness; one could ask no more, even from a loving husband. But there never was that between us which reached beyond affection, into the realm of love. _**

**_A wise and valiant man once told me that stubbornness was nearly all of the fight. But here, for once, I would venture to disagree with him. For it seems to me a blind and harmful stubbornness to persist in the face of long frustration and a loveless marriage. There was no failure on your part. Naive and childish as it may sound, I simply have no wish to be married to you anymore._**

**_So I ask that you consider my proposal and dissolve our understanding. S_****_et both of us free._**

**_As ever, your servant_**

**_Lothiriel_**

Eomer didn't believe that he could love a woman so much and yet still want to strangle her.

She was gone from her rooms. The men in the stables saw her take her bay mare out in the dark of morning, across the Pelennor fields.

* * *

Eomer found her in the Houses of Healing.

"What did you mean by your note?"

She stiffened; turned to face him as one would an adversary on the field of battle.

There was perhaps nothing so painful as loving someone who used to love you, Eomer thought. For there she was. Yet the distance between them never seemed further.

"Did you read it?" Her eyes blazed.

"Yes, I did," he ground out, "and then I burned it. If you're going to tell me that you no longer want to be my queen then you at least owe me the damn courtesy to tell it to my face."

"Then let me do so," she said, coming to a stand and clasping her hands before her, "I make you a dreadful queen –"

"You are an excellent queen," his jaw was clenched so tight he could barely get the words out.

"Let me finish, sir," her voice was no longer it usual, controlled pitch, " I know you think that you are obligated to me in some way, that you feel guilty for what happened, but it simply is not true. We no longer have any obligation to each other."

"You are my wife," he spat, "I am responsible for you, whether you like it or not."

She shook her head and began to brush past him.

"No, don't walk away, do you hear me?" Eomer cut off her exit, blocked it with his shoulders.

He pulled out the drawing from his pocket, "Do you remember this?"

Her eyes went wide, and she looked at him as if he had discovered something shameful from her past.

It was anguish, he thought, it was anguish on her face. One did not look anguished, if one had ceased completely to care.

It wasn't space she needed from him, Eomer realized then. It wasn't space; she had plenty of that in her own head, the space she kept between her thoughts, the space she kept between the inner parts of herself and everyone else, between her and him.

She needed him to get close, to get under that veil of distance and to tear it from between her fingers.

If they were to have any happiness, he thought, it depended on this.

"I want you explain to me what you meant by these words here," he said, "remember them? You wrote them. Do you want me to read them aloud to you, as to refresh your memory?"

She shook her head fiercely, "you know what they mean."

"No, I don't know," he roared, "because you don't tell me a damn thing about what's going on in that head of yours. So tell me why. Explain it to me, in words that even I can understand."

"No," she yelled back, "no, what ever you're doing, just stop it. I refuse to play your little game. Will you please just let me go?"

"Why? Why do you really want to end our marriage?"

"I just want to be free of it," she had tears in her eyes, "It's the only way, to be free. It's for your own good. You'll find happiness again, someone else who can make you laugh, make you happy. Someone not me. Don't you see?"

"By Erol's name, Lothiriel, please stop doing things for my own good; just stop being so damn high-handed you won't even bother to explain what you're thinking, out of some fool concern for my own good. It makes me want to rip every single hair out of my head. Right now I just need to know; do you love me, or not?"

"Oh, what does it matter?"

"Oh, it matters. It matters a whole lot."

"Does it make you happy, then, to see me in pain? Humiliated?" she was shaking now, he could almost hear her control breaking, "have you considered it possible that I said nothing because I didn't want your pity, because I would rather die than have you think me weak and foolish and full of childish feelings for you?

"Haven't you considered that I know just how stupid and impossible it is to even _think_ of loving a man who has not the least bit of interest in me, and try to make a life of it? Well, if almost dying has taught me anything, it's that I finally know how much of an idiot I have been, to throw my life and my heart away on this. On you. And I am done with it, with all of it."

"And what about these words," he shook the paper at her, "these words you wrote once?"

"Forget it," she stepped back, "forget all about them. Those are my private papers. You had no right to dig through what was not yours. And I am taking those words back."

"Say that again," Eomer said, his own control slipping as he took her by the shoulders and shook, "_I dare you to say that again._"

"You have never wanted to hear them," tears ran freely down her cheeks, and on her face was fury mingled with grief, "and I don't want to ever think them anymore, do you understand? I want to be through with this, with us, whatever we were. I want to live again; I want to be free."

"What if I told you I want to hear them?" His voice felt thick in his throat.

"What?"

"What if I told you that I would welcome everything you said in here," he continued, "that I have tucked this piece of paper next to my heart for almost every day since you were taken, that I looked at it every time I thought you might not return, just so I could make myself believe that you would come back, for me?"

She wouldn't meet his eyes, her eyes looked everywhere but at his, even though he was only at arm's length.

"I don't know what you're trying to say."

"Don't you understand, you impossible woman?" Eomer cursed softly, "How do I get this through your stubborn skull? I am in love with you; horribly, painfully in love with you. Hell, it hurts me just to look at you now. I love you rotten."

Her eyes widened. All blood fled from her face.

For a second there Eomer thought she understood him.

But in the next second her face crumpled, and instead of throwing herself into his arms she flew at him only to beat those fists – and Osric was right, her hands were surpassing strong – against his chest.

"Damn you, Eomer," she cried, "you bastard. Damn you to hell for all eternity. Don't you dare say that to me, don't you dare mock me now, after all this, after everything that's happened; don't you dare lie to my face, not about this. Not about this."

He reached out to hold her, but she threw off his arms in her rage.

"I can't bear it, don't you know," her voiced had dropped to a whisper, "You don't understand what effect your words have. How can you be so cruel? It will drive me mad for all time, this. I can't bear hearing you say those things."

She thought he was playing with her.

"But you must," Eomer said, closing his hands on hers, bunched into fists against his tunic. He closed his hands on hers, tightly. He never wanted to let go.

"Do you hear, me Lothiriel? You must bear it, because everything I've said is true. Look at me. Look at my face."

She went still then, and raised her tear-stained face to his.

"I love you, Lothiriel."

She reached out a hand, and shaking slightly she traced the lines of his brow, his nose, his lips. Eomer closed his eyes at the feel of it, the feel of her hand ghosting across his face.

"I love you, Lothiriel."

Then, finally, _finally,_ she was in his arms, her tears hot against his neck and her body shaking with emotions she could barely contain. He felt how fragile she was, how her hipbones knocked painfully against him and her shoulder blades cut so sharply against her back. She was half-collapsed in his arms, he realized, because her strength had nearly failed her.

Eomer held Lothiriel tighter to him.

"We met earlier on that day, didn't we?" he half-whispered into her ear, "Eowyn's wedding wasn't the first time I saw you. You were the healer that morning, in the Houses of Healing. You gave me comfort, when I was weeping and in need. You told me that you saw a blessed life for me, and that joy was my fate. You said that you could see my future clear. Do you remember?"

She nodded against his neck.

"I'm sorry for all this," he realized he too was weeping, "for what had happened, for all your pain, for the child; by God I didn't know. I didn't know about our child. But I wanted you to know that all those times you felt alone, abandoned and afraid; all that time I was wondering where you had gone, and why you weren't next to me, by my side, my equal, my queen. Don't you see, Lothiriel? You are my fate. I want no fate but you. I will have no fate but you."

She had finally come to love the chill of autumn, the white glow of winter, Lothiriel thought, but spring came again, and all around them the air was full of birdsong.

She had finally accepted the weight of the world, the casual cruelty of it, and the beastly nature of man; but now this grace, this gentleness, this unexpected joy.

If she could take the pain, then she could take this, too.

"Gods, woman, say something," muttered her husband, "say something."

Her husband.

"Eomer," she said.

There was a rising at the nape of her neck. There was a soft stampede within her veins.

"Eomer," she said, and kissed him.


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: an edit since the June 1 posting can be found below (I tried; I tried.) Quotes later taken from the Appendices of _The __Lord of the Ring_s.

*Please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of the story,_ especially if there's something I should have done better.*_

* * *

**Chapter VIII**

_here is the deepest secret nobody knows_

_(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud_

_and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows_

_higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)  
_

_and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart_

_i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)_

_- e. e. cummings_

_Wake up, Lothiriel. Wake up!_

Lothiriel startled into consciousness. For a moment everything was dark and she didn't know where she was. Arms came around her, rough hands shook her by the shoulders. She fought against it, struggled against it, struggled for air.

She landed a punch.

Somewhere a man groaned.

"Lothiriel, it's me, it's me," a voice said, "you're safe now. You're safe."

_Eomer._

Lothiriel stilled. In the darkness she saw his face looming above her, fear twisting in his features. His hands were iron manacles on her wrists, his heavy body lay across hers, his heart pounded against her skin.

"Did I hurt you, Eomer? Did I hit you?"

His hands unclenched. His breath escaped him in a gust; sweat beaded on his forehead, hair stood straight up on his arms. He sighed, a shuddering sound, and then rolled off of her onto his back, putting the heels of his hands to his eyes.

Then was Lothiriel's turn to sit up in the bed. She put a hand on his shoulder.

"Eomer."

"I don't know what happened," he said, "I looked over at you and I was convinced that you weren't breathing."

She removed his hands from his face and held them in hers.

"I'm here," she said.

"I'm sorry," his hands tightened convulsively on her arms, "I must have dreamed it. But you were lying so still. I took two breaths, then three, but you didn't breathe at all. I'm sorry; I panicked."

His hands, large, and warm, moved their way up her neck, to her face, and wound themselves into her hair as if trying to find purchase. His face, his dear face, was shadowed in the night.

"I can't," he closed his eyes briefly, "I can't lose you again."

Lothiriel drew the tips of his fingers against her neck, to where her own pulse thrummed steadily, steadily beneath her skin.

"I'm right here," she said, turning a kiss into one burning palm, holding it against her face, feeling the prominent beat in his wrist, hearing the hammering of his heart like a distant thunder in her ears, like the far away rush of great waters.

He sat up then in the darkness, arms gathering her close against the hot core of his body. He bent his golden head until the side of his ear was pressed against her breastbone.

"Yes," he said, lips curving against her skin into a smile, "I can hear you."

She drew air deeply into her lungs.

And as she ran a slow hand through Eomer's hair, he listened to the thud of her heart and the slow waves of her breath, until he had reassured himself that she was, indeed, living.

That morning, Lothiriel knew her resolve was not firm, that she teetered on the edge of some precipice. Seeing him standing there in the gardens, taking up so much of the sky with the outline of his shoulders, his eyes fixed on her, her heart had quaked within her. Her arguments stumbled. She had steeled herself; she thought, _I have faced the murderous crowds of Umbar. I have faced the long hunger of the Cages. _

_I can face my own husband. _

But then he said – then he said those words.

And after, blushing furiously, she had taken him by the hand, and led him to the room she lived in once, as a student in the Houses of Healing. They gave it back to her when she came, seeking shelter. The furniture was scarred, the small space too narrow for two.

She looked at the dark wooden shelves lined with books, explaining the creature that was Man, from heart to bone to mind. She looked at the desk by the window, on which she had scattered papers, unable to start a sketch. She looked at the small, narrow bed on which she slept alone for many years, with nothing but her studies to accompany her.

Across the room, he stood. His eyes were only on her.

He opened his arms, and this time, Lothiriel went into them.

And then...

_And then._

Some memories were branded into the skin. Some vows were imprinted upon the bones.

Both of them were still too raw for words. Sometimes the touch was enough, the touch, and the reassurance of one another in the darkness.

Lothiriel wondered if she were dreaming, now, if she had dreamed the whole of it. But she was not. For his hands were moving again, trailing a slow line from her neck down her back.

"Let me show you," she caught his fingers in hers, sliding them with almost unbearable warmth across her skin. "Let me show all the places my heart beats, for you."

"I will be guided by you, then," Eomer said, looking up at her, the shadows leaving his eyes and a smile curling on his lip.

Afterwards, when he slept again, an arm thrown behind his head and his mouth slightly open, the way he always slept, Lothiriel did not follow him.

The wind was balmy; it was the warmest night of spring. There was a sound on the air, far away in her ears, almost like the rush of waves.

Their clothes had been discarded much earlier, and the slanting moon shone full on his bare skin. She took the catalog of his scars, as she used to do in their great bed in the Golden Hall, by firelight.

Except for the burns across the back of his hands – she still had to go visit the man, Lothiriel remembered, the man they had rescued from the cages – Eomer had acquired no new marks.

There was the notch in his collarbone, where an Uruk sword had ricocheted off armor and bit into his flesh. There was the raised scar across his ribs, one acquired after the war; the wound had re-opened and she had to set a second row of stitches into his skin. There too, the old star-shaped remnant of an arrow-wound in his thigh, so close to the great arteries that she still shuddered to look on it.

The list went on, and on.

One night, long ago, Lothiriel had asked Eomer to tell her the stories behind all of them.

_And what about your scars, wife? _ He had teased.

She had but one, a small nick by her right hip from an old fall when she was a child of ten. Amrothos had pushed her off an old skiff they were playing in, on account of some terrible offense, and an oar had caught her on the way down.

In the great expanse of their bed in the Golden Hall, he had examined that scar, puny and insubstantial next to his wounds. He had slid a finger across it as if to test its permanence. Then he had pressed his lips there.

Lothiriel looked now for that tiny ribbon of raised flesh where thigh met hip.

Eomer's heat soaked into her. She felt drunk on it. The moonlight was a cool caress on her skin, raising the hair on her skin.

The scar was not there.

Lothiriel frowned. She could remember how hard her younger self had cried, though the prince's healer had told her she would have only a small mark.

_It's barely the size of my fingertip,_ he said.

_But I would have it forever;_ she said._ I would be marked forever._

It was the first sign of mortality upon her skin.

And it was no longer there.

For the sake of completeness she looked over on her left hip, which was also smooth in the night.

Next to her, Eomer slept on.

Lothiriel thought of how fast she seemed to recover, after her ordeal. It did not seem so strange to her, until now. She remembered how carefully Lord Celeborn had examined the healed cut on her fingers, where Corin's blood mingled with hers.

There was a distant drumming in her ears.

She looked at her hands, and realized that she no longer had the hands she did that dark night. Her hands looked strong. Her hands felt strong.

The drumming went on, the sound of two rhythms interlocked one against the other.

Lothiriel realized that it was not her heart that she heard.

It was Eomer's heart. And she could hear it it beating from where he lay beside her, across the expanse of air.

And the other sound under it, the slow crest that came again and again, was not a sound that she could never forget. She had heard it every day when she lived in Dol Amroth.

It was the sound of waves, the waves of the sea crashing on shore.

* * *

There was not much time, before the council that King Elessar summoned. Lothiriel would have to be in the White City before the sun rose to its zenith. But that morning she hunted for a millennia-old elf lord in the forest behind Ithilien.

It was as if she could sense where he was, a cool corner of moonlight tucked against the greening trees. She went into the forest and found him, high up, perched in the crown of a beech.

"Lord Celeborn," she called.

It was difficult to say what happened next. Lothiriel thought he might have simply glided down, two feet on the smooth sides of the beech bark, one hand outstretched to brace himself. Or perhaps he simply flew.

His robes fluttered about him. He landed with barely a sound.

Sometimes, when he did such things – ran for a whole evening without pause, sailed down from fifty feet in the air, she wondered if he were in fact corporeal at all, or if he was just a thought made manifest, a mind taken on visible form.

His eyes fixed on her, scenting her purpose before she even gave voice to it.

"You have questions for me," he said.

She paused, looking into his face only to find her own regard reflected back.

"A scar, my scar from when I was very young, has faded."

He nodded.

"Did you know?" She asked.

"I suspected."

"What's happening to me?"

He glanced down at his feet. He sighed.

"Can it be so bad?" She asked.

He was quiet for another moment, as if trying to make up his mind.

"When I came upon you that night in the woods," he began to walk, long strides taking him rapidly between new blooming trees, "you weren't breathing. You weren't breathing or moving at all."

Lothiriel followed after him.

"What are you saying?"

"In my many years I have seen life and death over and over. You were dead when I found you; I was certain of it."

He frowned at the memory of it. His steps faltered in the shade of a green oak.

"I waited. Five minutes, without movement or breath. And then you raised your head and looked straight at me. You drew air into your lungs again. I don't know who was more frightened, in that moment – you, or me. Why do you think I was so ill-at-ease? Why do you think I interrogated you when it should have been obvious that you were a victim?"

"Then how am I still here?"

"I suppose you couldn't have been dead; but you were close. Something brought you back from the edge. For it was Corin who you had met in the cages, was it not? It was his blood that mingled with yours, in that wound in your hand. Blood called to blood, and something that slept all these long years in the line of Dol Amroth woke that night, when you were at the limits of your endurance."

He sighed, and ran his fingers over a new unfurling leaf of the great oak.

"You will notice that you can see farther, hear better. Your human gracelessness will be stripped from you. People, who are any kind of people, will notice."

"Eomer was afraid that I had stopped breathing, last night."

"You do need air. But not as much; perhaps three breaths a minute is all you require, not ten or twelve. Which can be very disconcerting for an attentive lover."

Then Lothiriel said, "I think I can hear the sea, far off in the distance."

His eyes flickered to hers, in alarm.

"Is that even possible, my lord?"

"You can hear the sea?" he repeated.

"I know the sound," she said.

"So you do," he said, his hand stilling, "I had hoped you would be spared that part, at least. That sea-longing."

"Are you saying that I am – I don't even know how to say this," there was a strange pain in her throat, "What am I, exactly?"

"I don't know," he said, "I only know what you are not. And you are not elven kind, but nor are you fully human either. And if you hear the sea – it means that you have a choice. Perhaps the choice had always been here, running in the blood of the sons and daughters of Elros. "

"What are you saying?"

"That you may live to see all the days of this age, and all the ones that come after. That you may have the longevity of elves. Indeed, you may never have to accept that bitter cup which is the Doom of Men. For if the sea calls to you, then you may take to the sea and go West, if that is your desire."

"That's not possible," she said.

"Maybe not," he agreed, "but it has happened."

"But that's," she swallowed, "That's Luthien's choice – Arwen's choice. I'm… I'm human. I am ordinary. And why would I go? Everything I have is here. All my life, all the people I love."

He looked at her with pity.

"Not always, Lothiriel. Not for always, not in this Middle-earth," he looked away, looked to the West, where everything had gone, "This land promises us nothing for certain."

* * *

King Elessar had called her for a meeting in the highest tier of the city. Lothiriel thought she was to give brief account of what had happened to her in the Cages, but it was not so.

The bright spring sun of Gondor poured in through great windows. They had gathered around a table on which was spread a large map of Southern Gondor and Near Harad.

Grimund was there, tight-lipped and somber as ever, though he nodded to her; eyes shining. He laid down a map: the City of the Corsairs. Every street was outlined, the whole spoke-wheel of the city drawn down to its finest details, and then over the map, an outline of red, to indicate how much the fire had spread.

There were men of the Mark present; other members of her rescue party. She greeted them warmly.

So too there was Amrothos, with whom she had reunited the first evening.

He had gathered reports from his men and Erchirion's. Maps, routes, and a plan of the city were laid before them.

The fire that night, Amrothos said, had consumed most of the great port city, raging through the stalls and the markets by the water, destroying hundreds of docks on the edge of the water.

It had burnt through the great workshops of the shipwrights of Umbar. It had consumed the repository of their fuel and also their arsenal. By the time the rain had started, the fire reached so far as the citadel. The once-white walls, Amrothos said, were now black.

"Aragorn," from beside Lothiriel, Eomer braced both arms on the table and leaned in, "there is no better time than now to strike at the heart of the Haradrim, to strike at the City of the Corsairs."

Stunned, Lothiriel looked around her again, at the group of people assembled. Faramir was there, his brows knitted carefully together, and Eowyn beside him, eyes shining.

Gondor, Rohan, Dol Amroth, she counted in her head. All the northern realms of men, united in this room.

This was no audience, she thought. It was a council of war.

"I agree," Amrothos said, "If we raised an army and went by sea, we can make a foothold in that city, and from there go further inland. This is their greatest port; cut it off and the landlocked parts of the country will dry up; cut off the head and the whole beast will die."

Aragorn studied the map.

"The harvests have been good these last few years, my lord," A muscle danced in Faramir's jaw, "the land heals. If you want to raise an army, men will come to your side."

"Dol Amroth will give our navy, and our ships. Our shipwrights are ready to build at your command," Amrothos said.

"And what of Rohan?"

"The harvest is good," Grimund replied, "the men there may love the peace, but better than peace they love Eomer Eadig."

"I will take the oath of Erol, Aragorn," Eomer said, "my armies will follow yours where you go. But in this case, I will happily go there myself."

_War. _Lothiriel thought.

"And what of you, Lothiriel?" The King of Gondor suddenly turned his clear grey eyes to her, "what says the queen of Rohan?"

She once told the Jurist that she would knock the Cages to the ground, that she would break the bones of the Lords of Umbar and Harad.

But Lothiriel felt none of that rage, now. There was a sickness in her stomach, a sense of shock verging on horror, thinking of the men of the Mark who must leave their wives and go to war.

She remembered the faces that came before her cage. Mothers and wives, brothers and fathers. The faces of ordinary people. She thought of the Jurist – the Jurist, who had taken her, and who had let her go.

She thought_, if we go to war now, it will have been my fault; the blood of Harad and Gondor and Rohan will be on my hands._ And she would become as Anarwyn had been, fell and despairing.

_The blood of the innocent on her hands will not fade._

She was a healer. She had been a healer before she was a queen. How could she stand for this?

They were waiting, still. Eomer was looking at her. Faramir was looking at her.

Lothiriel forced herself to speak.

She said, "In truth, sire, it is not what I would want."

She could feel their eyes on her. Attuned to him as she was, Eomer's confusion was an almost palpable wave against her skin.

"I know that you would have spared us this, if you could," said Aragorn.

She nodded tightly.

"Lothiriel," Amrothos started, "Lothiriel, they tried to kill you."

"Some of them, maybe," she clasped her hands in her lap, "But they are not orcs, Amrothos. They are not beasts, or monsters. They are man-kind; they are our kind. I have seen them, and they are just like you and me. They are living people."

"Your words are true, lady. And your restraint to be commended," Aragorn waved a hand to silence the other protests, "We must think more on this before anything proceeds. And I must speak with Imhrahil."

About ships, she thought. Aragorn will need to speak to Father about ships to hold the soldiers.

And she knew; it would be war.

* * *

"I can't believe you are arguing with me on this," Eomer said. "I cannot believe that on this thing you might fight me."

It was the first time she had opposed him in an open council.

Eomer had stalked after her as they left the audience chambers, and with a firm arm steered her into the maze of hallways. They stepped into a small library. He closed the door.

"I don't," she said, "I don't want to be the reason people go to war, Eomer. That's not me, that is not what I do."

"And what," he roared, "did you think was going to happen, from the moment that you were taken? Did you think that you could have avoided this? Did you think that by simply leaving your medallion you could have prevented this?"

"I thought that I could," she said, "I thought that it would be enough. Eomer. I don't want the blood of our people on my hands."

"You are a queen now, Lothiriel," Eomer's hair was ragged with the way he ran his hands through it, "_you must bear it_. People will die because of decisions you make. That is what it means, to be a queen."

"I was to be your queen in a time of peace," she said, " I was to be your queen in a time when the land was healing, when the wars were at an end."

"You are the queen of Rohan, Lothiriel, in peacetime and in war," he lowered his voice, tried to speak in a gentler tone, "and wars will never end. I told you once, we cannot leave such a threat as Harad sitting merrily south of our borders. We go; we fight, to keep what happened when Saruman razed the Westfold from ever happening again"

"How do you even know that?" her head ached, "this is different. This is a pre-emptive attack, Eomer. Why should we go to war without any offence?"

"Without offense? What do you think they were trying to do when they took you?"

"I don't want this, Eomer. I told you, I don't want this. I thought, I just thought that I'd come home and find everything - "

"The way it was?" He said, bitterly, "Lothiriel, that is what one tells children. But we know better. They took you to start a war. And we will give them one, but on our terms, not theirs."

"So be it," her throat felt hoarse with the frustration of it, "so be it, have your war. But not with me. I don't want to be a part of it."

"What the hell are you saying? Lothiriel?"

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know. But if I hadn't been stupid, then, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe it would never have happened if I never came home. Maybe it won't happen, if I'm not here."

"Don't ever say that," his hands were on her shoulders, his eyes afire, "Don't ever say something like that to me, ever again. This would have happened one day, regardless, do you understand? You might be the catalyst, but it was not your fault."

"Please, let us not argue," she said, puling away from him. She could not risk going into his embrace, and lose her powers to think rationally. "Please, not so soon, not now."

"Lothiriel, come back here," He reached out to her again, "You are upset."

"I'm sorry, sir," she said, "And you're right. I am overset. I simply can't believe this. Please. I need to think."

"My name is Eomer," he said. taking another step closer, "Woman, Gods, do you doubt me already? I do not argue this with you because I have changed my heart of you, but because it is an impossible problem.

"I am not yelling at you because I don't love you. I am yelling because I don't know the answers to these things. And I thought that if you were with me, then at least there would be two of us to think about it, two of us to fight against it. Do you understand?"

"I know," she said, "you're right. You're right. And I don't want to ever run from you again. But please. Give me some time. I need to think, I need some distance from it. All I feel now is horror."

He reined himself back, but with an effort.

"What is there to think about, Lothiriel?"

"Everything, Eomer. Everything."

* * *

Almost unconsciously, her steps took her back to the place where she was always useful, where she always felt the peace that comes with knowing her place in the world.

Lothiriel passed the gates of the Houses of Healing.

What was the point of what she went through in the Cages, if it only led to more pain, more suffering?

She wished that life wouldn't be such a fight. That she wouldn't have to fight every damn day for what she believed in, or even for her right to live in the world. But the fight was never over. There would always be another war. There was always more sickness.

_The sea calls to you, you may take to the sea, and go West, if that is your desire._

To a place without war. To a place without death.

She told Eomer she wanted to think, but all she could think of was how different this homecoming was, compared to what she had dreamed.

_A war. _Because of her. Ambivalent was too bland a word for it, she thought; the feeling of being torn between ecstatic joy, for her husband loved her, and a desire to run, far, far away from this place.

How much more complicated everything had become.

The healers knew her. They told her that Eomer's patient, the only one who had been retrieved alive from the cages, was awake and speaking.

The burnt man, they called him, though he sustained no serious burn injuries, except some minor ones to his back. It was the smell of flames, they told Lothiriel; the smell of flames clung to him like a perfume, and his voice, which was ruined, sounded like he had swallowed fire. There was great scar across his face, which was healing, but slowly. He had the lungs of a man twice his age. But he lived.

Lothiriel took with her a change of dressings, and some fresh water. Through the open window she glimpsed the dark head and the white corner of a bandage. He was sitting up against the pillows, letting the spring air fall upon his ruined face.

But it wasn't until she came through the opened door that she saw the other half of his face, the part untouched by the sword.

The hair had been shorn; the brows and the fine beard singed off. Half his head was bandaged, and beneath it the edges of a livid scar shone out, red and purple, contracting against the skin.

He looked different enough that she almost didn't recognize him; without his robes, without that quiet pride, without the deadly promise of that sword sheathed by his side.

But Lothiriel looked again. There was the clear grey eye, the still-proud nose, and the full mouth under it, that had always seemed too gentle for his face. She came to a standstill.

The burnt man inclined his head, stiffly and with pain, from where he lay in the bed.

"Lady," he said.

"Jurist."

* * *

When the darkness was full, he had climbed into her cage and carried her out.

"At first I could hear you singing, a soft strange song under your breath," he said.

He had draped a dark cloak over both of them and ran, far from the hot, close air of the city they emerged into the cool breeze. His lungs ached with exertion. He ran on, until the streets passed behind them, until the ground rose, until they came under the shade of trees, until it was cool dirt and the softness of grass underfoot.

"By then, you had stopped singing," he said, "You still breathed, but the pulse was faint in your neck. You had lost a great deal of blood. So I left you by the water. And I went back to my Judgment."

"Why save me at all, if you knew I was going to die?"

The Jurist was quiet.

And then he said, "do you know, the locks on those cages are intricate and strange. They are made by masters to be indecipherable, unbreakable, unless the cage itself were broken.

"Yet I had your lock set upon the code that would open the door, every night. A single tug would have freed it, for I expected them to come for you. But no one came. And you never attempted to climb out. I suppose that you hated me far too much to think that it was possible."

He smiled bleakly at the shock on her face.

"Could you have walked out of the cages? maybe, maybe not. There are many guards around at night."

But it would not have been an impossibility, Lothiriel thought. It would not have been altogether impossible.

"I knew that you would not try it; it would have been unheard of, and yet I lived in expectation of it every night, in fear and expectation that the next morning when I arrived the cage would be empty, but it never was.

"And then I started to think, what if I simply told you? Or what if I simply let you go? I am your Jurist; I alone am in control of your fate, your freedom. But the idea of it frightened me.

"So I waited, until I waited too long. You did not know you were with child, did you? I could hear it in your voice when you called for me. I told you then, in the beginning, one must go into the cage, and one must die. The terms were fulfilled, when I let you free. But I should have been less of a coward. And this is what happened, because I was a coward, because I feared so much that everything I have ever learned was wrong."

She felt a sting in her eyes, blinked. But the tears did not come. She reached over and took the Jurist's hands firmly in hers, pressed them.

"I am not the hero of this story, Lady," he said, "I am the villain."

"Tell me what happened."

They had put him in his own Cage, that very evening.

For failing to be the eye and ears and arms of the law, they told him, they would take each of those things from him, slowly, day by day. And the first evening, it was his eye.

"Then the fire came," he coughed, "the fire came, and I thought it must have been your ghost, giving us the vengeance that you promised."

He laid back against the pillow.

Lothiriel drew close. She lifted a hand, and with growing confidence worked at the edges of the dressing that covered his face, until the wound was exposed to the air.

It was closing well. The edges had been trimmed clean of any debris, the stitches over the forehead and cheek held almost no tension on the skin. The eyelid was empty, and closed. They might find a patch for him, one day, Lothiriel thought. Aside from the violacious color of it, where the vessels of his face had been cut through, it was a clean wound.

She blotted at the edges of it, cleaning away the old blood.

"There's no need to keep it wrapped, now," she told him, "the skin has closed over."

He clenched his jaw as she removed the rest of the wrappings around his head.

"It's not so very bad, Jurist," she said, "I think you might actually look quite dashing, one day."

He opened that one eye. He said, "My death is yours, Lady. It seems that fate had spared me for this, so that I might come into your hands."

"You are my charge now, Jurist," she told him, "my task is to look after your welfare, not your death."

His grip was still strong as iron when he caught her hand.

"Do not play with me, lady," he said, "at least give me the degree of dignity that I had accorded to you."

She sat down by him. The cool wind blew in through the window, falling on those razed locks of his.

"Or perhaps we will spare one another, Jurist," she said.

He was silent. He closed that good eye seemed to focus on his breathing once more.

"They mean to go to war," she said.

He did not open his eye.

"They mean to attack Umbar while it is still weak, and from there to subdue all of Harad."

"It is a good plan," he said.

"I don't want to go to war," she said, "I don't want to spill the blood of the innocent."

"But would your armies slaughter women and children?" he asked, "God knows you have enough reason to invade. But would your armies raze the city again to the ground, or would they allow them their lives?"

"How does it matter?" she asked.

"It matters," he said, "it matters. And they are right, there is no better time than now, for the least bloodshed."

The grey eye opened, and looked at her.

"You are uncomfortable with the idea, that men would die for you? How strange, in a queen, how rare," he shook his head, "you would rather rescue the sickly, because then you may never have to question yourself, because then you think you are free from all this, from the dirty fight of it all. But you are not. You are not free of it; you are in the thick of it. Even you, Lady, cannot live blameless.

"You are a healer, but one day you will injure a patient. You are a queen, and one day, the innocent and the loyal will die because of you."

"It is what I wanted all my life, to always stand in the light. To be beyond reproach," he laughed, a terrible, guttural sound, "I wanted to be the eyes and ears and arms of the law. But I've been wrong; more than wrong, I've been implicated in all the injustice. Do you understand how many nights I lay here, thinking of making an end of it?"

"Isn't there somewhere we could go," she said, "beyond the reach of war, of that constant, unending fight?"

"There is, Lady," he closed his eyes again as if his speech had wearied him, "but it is called death."

* * *

"It won't work forever, you know," Eomer said.

"What won't?"

"This, Lothiriel," he tossed back the blankets and ran a hand through his hair, still breathing hard, "trying to overwhelm me so that we don't have to talk."

She brought herself up to her elbows and smiled at him.

"Am I overwhelming you?"

"I think, madam," he turned a kiss onto her bare shoulder, "you know exactly what effect you have on me."

Lothiriel rose then, and pushed at him until he fell back onto the bed. She let the mass of her hair flow over his skin, pressed a kiss to the sensitive spot beneath his earlobe, and trailed her fingers down the plane of his stomach. His eyelids fluttered shut. She heard his breath catch.

"Do you yield, sir?"

A lazy smile.

"Yield, lady? Never. A Rider of Rohan does not – "

But Lothiriel never did find out what a Rider of Rohan does or does not do, for she set her mouth upon his skin and her hands against his straining flesh, and besieged him as gamely and stubbornly as a Marshall of the Mark would besiege an enemy, until he bucked against her, until sweat beaded against his skin, until his hands twisted in the sheets. His face was clenched in an expression between pleasure and pain.

Then he cried out. For the space of moment, he was utterly beyond reach - in some sunlit cove; upon shores not of this Middle-earth.

His heart was a drumming in her ears.

Lothiriel moved up to lay beside him, and brushed his sweat-soaked hair out of his face.

"I yield," he was saying, somewhat breathlessly, "I yield."

Lothiriel took one of his big hands and pressed a kiss to it.

_You're mine,_ she thought. It was one of the things Amrothos always said when he tried to explain to her what it was between him and Thalion, one of the things that confused her the most. But now, somehow, it rang clear and true.

_You're m__ine,_ she thought, _as I have been yours since first I saw you._

Eomer opened his eyes. He watched in silence as she ministered to the fading burn marks on his hand with her lips.

Then he said, "I'm sorry, Lothiriel."

"Sorry for what?" she murmured against his hand.

"For what? How about the year when you were unhappy in Rohan? For not being a husband with whom you could share your burdens, for doubting your heart when you have the truest heart? Or for the war against the Haradrim?"

"Eomer."

His fingers nudged her chin. She lifted her eyes to his.

"I know you still doubt me," he said.

"Eomer – "

"Hush," two fingers on her lips, "I would doubt me too, if I were you. A year's worth of – I don't even know how I behaved, save that it pains me to think of you suffering in silence because of me. And now, when I've only begun to make reparations, I plunge us headfirst into war."

Lothiriel sat back on her heels. Her mouth felt dry. The languor of their lovemaking faded like fog in the sun.

"If I were you," his calluses were rough against her skin, "I would wonder how this man could speak words of love to me, and yet do that which seems to be its opposite."

"Eomer – "

"Can you deny it?"

"Don't do this," she said. She felt cold.

"I'm sorry," he said, turning her face until she met his eyes again, "I'm sorry. But we can't go on as we did before, keeping secrets from one another. It nearly killed us both. Lothiriel, please, tell me. I know this look of yours, this distant, quiet mood. I know that you must doubt me."

"Eomer."

His hand tightened against her skin.

"I'm no good at it. It's all new to me, all of this. I can barely even get the words out. If you're distant because you doubt me – because you doubt my heart, I deserve it. I know I deserve it full well, but I swear to you I will spend the rest of my days showing you, telling you, loving – "

"I know your heart is true," Lothiriel whispered against his mouth, to stop his words, "I know you. I know your heart is true."

But he was not deterred.

"Then what is it? What is it you're not telling me? Lothiriel?"

* * *

This time she was weeding in the gardens when Celeborn found her.

"He is a charming young man, your husband," said the Lord of the Golden Wood.

When he woke this morning, Eomer demanded to meet with Celeborn. And Lothiriel had been there to witness the strange introduction between the two.

She did not know why Eomer was so silent, until she realized that he was fighting against that wellspring of emotion inside him, as he so often did. It gave him that puzzled look on his face, that fierce frown.

She knew that look now. Finally she knew that look and understood it.

"What you have done, my lord," Eomer said, "what you have done for Lothiriel and for me, we will never forget."

Then he extended his hand to Celeborn and swore eternal friendship between the house of Erol and the elves of the Golden Wood.

"For all the years that you remain in this Middle-earth," Eomer said, "for all years that my heirs dwell in this land, you will have our friendship and our good-will."

And Lothiriel could tell that Celeborn had been moved, more than a little, as he took Eomer's arm.

"Charming?" she asked.

"And he adores you," said the elf-lord.

She looked at him.

"He does," he said, "anyone with eyes can see it."

Then he said, "how much did you tell him?"

A beat.

"I hardly knew what to tell him," Lothiriel said.

She swallowed.

"He knows there is a strangeness in my blood."

"And what of the sea? What of your sea-longing?"

"The sea," she repeated, "the sea-longing. I did not know how to tell him about the sea longing. What was I to say? That it pains me to stay here with him, but it would pain me more to leave? How does one even speak of it, to someone who doesn't feel it? Do you feel it, My Lord? Is it the same for you?"

"Do I feel it?" he looked at her, "Do I feel that terrible longing for relief, that ache of a heart wanting to be at ease? Oh, I feel it, Lothiriel. And the heart is rarely ever at ease, is it? Not here, in this Middle-earth."

She said, not looking at him, "will you ever go West, do you think?"

He said, "it is a choice we have to face."

"No," Lothiriel said, "no, my lord. You see, that was one thing I could tell him, the one certain thing, that I would never leave his side as long as we both lived, if he wished it."

"Because you love him?"

"Because whatever happens, I would have him. And he would have me."

"And was he happy with your answer?"

"He said,_ it is enough._"

And strangely the elven lord began to smile. He smiled at her with such sweetness in that ancient face that it seemed to pierce her to the heart.

"I had a daughter, who met with grief upon these shores," he said, "A thousand years ago she went to the Havens and across the sea. In some ways you remind me of her, but I am glad you choose to stay, that you choose to face the risk of this Middle-Earth. For it is not without danger."

"You fought during the war," she said, "for the Golden Wood?

"Galadriel and I fought against Dol Guldur," he said, "where once Sauron held great power. And we won."

"You once said that a weapon like Corin's would suit me quite well," Lothiriel said, "since I am to stay - would you teach me to use it, then?"

"It would be my supreme pleasure."

* * *

In predawn shadows, a strong arm came around her.

Eomer's hand found hers, there in the darkness. She burrowed against him; she felt as if they were two hibernating animals in a great dark cavern under the eternal snow.

And as she sank again into the warmth of sleep it seemed that a man stood there before her.

_Share it with me_, he said. It was Eomer, it was all the faces he would ever wear, in youth and in old age. But she could see beyond it, to him, to the thing that was at the heart of him, to the fire that burned between those eyes, without beginning or end.

_Share it with me, _he said_, the risk of this human life. In the darkness I will take your hand, and lead you to where I am._

He said, _Every meeting is a parting. In every beginning is an end. Every moment a battle. This is the risk of our human world._

_It frightens me, _she said.

_I'm frightened too, my love,_ he said, _but you will be by my side. _

_Share it with me, the risk of this Middle-Earth. _He said_. And at the ending of it, fly free with me to the doom that comes after, fly with me beyond the cages of this world._

She said,_ I will._

* * *

**Epilogue**

_Eomer took again the Oath of Erol, and wherever King Elessar went to war King Eomer went with him._

And beyond the Sea of Rhun and on the far fields of the South, where dwelt the tribes of the Haradrim and their seafaring allies, the thunder of the cavalry of the Mark was heard, and the White Horse upon Green flew in may winds.

And ever beside her king and husband there too rode Lothiriel, warrior Queen of Rohan. Tall she stood among the men of the West, dark haired and fierce in her beauty. In her hand shone a silver ax once wielded among the elven warriors of Lothlorien, and that weapon she used with deadly force before the face of her enemies.

In the City of the Corsairs she led the charge through hosts of the pirate lords and the Southrons who aided them, for she had once suffered great sorrow at the hands of the Haradrim, though one of their warriors fought now by her side.

With her own eyes she saw to the breaking of the Cages of Harad, and had the stone cast into the sea so that none might ever again know what she had known, or see what she had seen. And when they had taken the city, the Armies of Gondor and Rohan saw to the freeing of the slaves who had labored there; they brought food and supply to the commonfolk, who suffered more than anyone in times of war.

Among the people of Rohan, it was rumored that the Princes and Princesses of Dol Amroth were descended of elven blood, and among them Lothiriel in particular had been charged with the fëa of the eldar. Indeed, when Eomer's first son had been born, grey-eyed and golden haired, Celeborn of Lothlorien emerged from his travels among the deep shadows of Middle-earth to be present for the christening of the babe, who was called Elfwine, _Elf-friend._

As years passed and Eomer's mane began to take a silver sheen, it was noted that Lothiriel remained nearly as she was in the hours of her youth, though her wisdom grew with her strength. But the people had grown to love their queen. Eomer they named the _Blessed_; and Lothiriel, the _Unfaded_. Though the gift of the eldar could also be a burden, for some said that Lothiriel felt a longing for the sea all her life.

Yet while Eomer lived Lothiriel stayed ever by her lord's side, in peacetime and in war, for there was great love between them.

It was not until ten years after Eomer's passing, when Elfwine sat firm upon the throne of the Riddermark, and the Golden Hall was filled again with the laughter of the children of the King, that the house woke one morning to find Lothiriel departed.

Some said that days later they saw a skiff sailing into the Bay of Belfalas at the coming of night with a lone woman at its bow, her dark hair loosed in the wind. And if it had been Lothiriel on that ship, where she went then none now know.

Perhaps she took the straight path to the elven home beyond the sea. Perhaps she journeyed to another land, to another shore, and took on a different name, for she loved life and the sight of new lands and the language and music of a new people.

Or perhaps she had pushed off the dock alone that evening, taking with her only her favored weapon and her drawings of her lord - as he was in the golden days of his youth, as he was in his twilit age - that she might see him better in her mind. Perhaps she waited for the night's cover, waited until she had gone far into the blue water, until all the sounds of cities and men had been left behind.

And then, surrounded by the sea and the stars, surrounded by the memory of one she loved, she chose that evening the doom of men and passed beyond the circles of this world.

The cage is empty. The birds have flown.


End file.
